On your dad’s 20th birthday you were still in the womb, swimming around subtle in the stoic quiet, like a minnow. Sometimes I could hear your kicks and shifts, not a whisking of water but an echo coming from the limbs themselves, like when we think we can hear our heartbeats but know it’s only a feeling. You came in and out like waves. A face turning toward the light then back again. Arms to your little mouth then back to your chest A little backbone shifting from the right to the left side of my belly. Little frog legs drawing up then kicking out, sending a shock of fluid into a momentary whirlpool. Little tempest, little rowboat bobbing and tilting, little waves.

Anyhow your dad and I walked barefoot and lazy along Lake Michigan’s Indiana Dunes shore that June, picking little bits of shell, stone, and flotsam for a mobile we never made you (not yet, anyhow). The whole sky was orange and shone on his face like early Technicolor, unnatural and odd. You’ll learn that I’m easily made uncomfortable by the littlest things. I must have wandered off nearer the water by myself for a while, staring out at the colors. A little wave rushed in and washed the sand off the tops of my toes, kindly, then retreated. Another wave, larger and with more violent intent, ran in red rover then out again. There you were.

That was the first time you were reflected in the outside world. That moment you became a metaphor, a mirror image, then a thread linking your little bones to the world surrounding. You became stuck, held in the grasp, the gravity of bones and mud and skin. Your minnow bones capsized and became real, a little boy’s body tossing and tumbling in a great void, legs asunder, pale arms flailing before resting calm, turned upside down in wait. There you were, allied with the shift and the shore for the first time, outside of myself, tied to all. You may let it be a certainty, a swaddling, a warm pair of arms to return home to.