May 1, 2010 my life changed forever. I know it’s a cliché, everyone says it. You see your child for the first time and the world shifts and you feel like a different person. Sometimes cliché’s exist because they are true, and there are few ways to describe a personal phenomenon that is so simultaneously awesome and dumbfounding at the same time that all you can do is fall back on old tropes and pull a cliché out of your hat.
So, May 1st, 2010 my first son was born. Ritchie Alexandre Hall III came screaming into the world through a hole a doctor cut in my wife’s stomach after hanging out there for 38 weeks. I sat there, her hand in mine and it was surreal. It were as though someone had dropped me off a great height and as I reached terminal velocity my body had no weight and my mind scrambled to reassess what was up or down. The hospital staff showed me my son, covered in the goo that was his life giving bio cage and I was stupefied. That being, that mewling ball of discomfort belonged to me. And that moment I couldn’t help but feel the internal shift as my life went from being my own to something else entirely.
Each day with this little man is like a gift from a wellspring of magical creatures. A baby in the first few weeks is like a pet that evolves daily into sentience. The first day his cloudy eyes darted every which way, often independent of each other. Only three weeks later and now he will track you as you walk past or turn his head to great me from a long day at work. It is a fascinating journey that I hope to eventually find words to adequately describe. With each new day I am overjoyed by the small moments, feeding him, holding him, walking him about the apartment as I sing the soundtrack to Man of Lamancha, these are the absolute joys of my day. I cherish it when he rests on my chest, or when his brows rise as he recognizes me a little before his head falls. I have taken a million pictures of the kid. He is my legacy, my male heir. I want to spend my days showering him with accolades and encouragement. I want to spend my life in service of his greatness. He is my young prince and literally from the moment he was born I realized that there was no me, there was he, and I was the conduit of his existence on this planet that hurls through space. That is a great feeling, it also frightens me beyond words. The future is a wild open space where dangers and trials lurk. There are no guarantees for long life, health or prosperity. I want to work hard to insure all those things for my son despite the uncertainty. I want to rebuild the world so that he, and whatever progeny he wishes to birth have only the best on the road ahead. I want most of that he live and find happiness in the cold and callous life. I recognized a fraction of this in the moment I saw his face and with each day the entirety of it becomes more real to me.
I pray that I live up to the honor that is being his father.
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