Triptych

I am standing at the end of my driveway holding a maroon canvas bag big enough to hide a body. It has a smell that radiates around it, even in cold February air that turns my breath to steam. I have borrowed almost all the equipment inside from other guys, an entire archaeology of sweat on shinguards and shoulderpads. Sedimentary sweat, an adolescent bouquet. In a year, when I’m old enough to drive, I will keep this bag in the trunk of my car between practices , and the sweat in the dirty boxer shorts will freeze them stiff overnight. I have seen the others bang their underwear against concrete walls, or wait for them to soften like wet chamois in the warmth of the locker room, and then put them on again. It is 4:35 a.m. and my ride to ice hockey practice is late. I have never been outside at this hour. Who knew the whole world was out here, like this, every night? Every set of headlights I see on distant main road doesn't turn. Who are these other people, out here with me at this godforsaken hour?

* * * * *

Every time a car heads towards us at the university gate in the dark we get anxious. Well before five o'clock, we finally flag down a cab. This is the second day in a row that I have been taxied across the entire city of Beijing at this hour of the morning. Yesterday we arrived at the airport only to linger over goodbyes for hours. Finally, when I was as close as I could ever be to finally say goodbye for five more months, a Chinese airline official with a Chinese love for the rules refused to let me into the concourse. International flights required passengers to be at the gate an hour before takeoff and there I was, only 55 minutes early. I argued and got a ticket for this morning's flight, and we knew we would be going through all this again, now. All of yesterday and last night we spent in bed, so exhausted during this 24-hour reprieve we could hardly talk. In the cab, she takes my bare hand in her woolly-mittoned one, and I dread the passing of each gaudy block of Beijing, the neon logograms, and the streets empty of their many millions.

* * * * *

At eleven o'clock the midwife was ready to send us home, but your mother was too stubborn to be told she wouldn't get to meet you tonight. It is 4:30 in the morning now, but your eyes are open and all of Detroit sits dark and quiet outside this window. I see brake lights down on the avenue, and watch as a car goes several blocks under the street lamps before the driver realizes he doesn't have his headlights on. Over on that bed, one hell of a woman sleeps, and we'll give her whatever she will take. The only sound in this room is you breathing. It took so long for them to get you to start, and we were all breathless there with you until it came with a sour gulp of mucus and finally, a cry. All night I have felt like a wanderer in a foreign city, comparing the sights to those in another strange city I wandered into years ago. But you cannot compare cities. They are just where people sleep, or don't sleep; where they rise and live out their days. I forgot how small you'd be. After life with your sister, her endless queries and interrogations, you are so unexpectedly quiet. Soon there will be light. The room will fill with your first day. But for now it's just you and me at this window, with the few other souls out there doing what it is we do before dawn breaks.

* * * * *

Thank you for the wonderful comments to the last post, we've enjoyed every one. We're hammering out a birth story together, tentative title: There Will Be Blood 2. That, and more details, will follow.