Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle
In an e-mail to my mother last week, Kathy pointed out that the demands on our time are unusual. Together we visit the hospital daily, and she keeps intimate relations with a breast pump eight times a day. Our lives now orbit around these circumstances. Amid them, we also continue to prepare our apartment for Gabriel’s arrival here. But Mom was having none of Kathy’s excuses. “It would also be difficult if you had brought him home,” she replied.
I try to imagine what this experience would have been like, how it might be were Gabriel still to be born the second week of August. I can’t. For most of the past month, we have been spectators at the care of our son. His doctors have decided how much and how often he should eat, deciphered when he has been unhappy or ill; his nurses have fed him, changed his diapers, given him baths, consoled him when he’s been upset. We have been allowed to join in some things, such as changing diapers and giving baths, but always that verb allowed has enveloped us with the scent of rotten eggs. 
That Gabriel lives in an incubator (see image, right) has made the feeling more acute. When he is inside it, he is like Sleeping Beauty in her castle. Lying, waiting, he sleeps, oblivious to all. We stick our arms through portholes in the castle’s side to comfort him or ourselves. Would that we could kiss him and deliver him from his prison! But only his nurse can spring him free.
Certainly, every passing day brings us more freedom. Less than a week ago—just shy of a month after his birth—we were first allowed to take our son out of his box ourselves. Two days ago, they let Kathy nurse him when he is hungry. Soon enough Gabriel will be moved to a crib, his NG tube will come out, and he will receive all of his feedings by mouth. Before that happens, one or both of us will be living at the hospital, and we will share responsibility for him with his nurses. Not long after that, we will bring Gabriel home, and we will share him with no one.
The irony of Mom’s assertion is that when Gabriel does comes home, I won’t need to try to imagine what it’s like to bring a newborn home from the hospital; after all, though he’ll have two months under his onesie, Gabriel will still be a newborn. All of the hesitation and uncertainty and pride and exultation and drudgery and failure—all the difficulty of first-time parenting—still awaits.
