The Thirteenth Dispatch

No one is ever ready for this

I’m writing this in the neonatal ICU next to my son, all two pounds and three ounces of him, as he struggles to breathe inside a clear plastic box. He was born 14 weeks early in a complete shocker that has totally and forever altered our lives. Within hours of his rapid and unexpected birth—where my wife delivered an intact amniotic sac in lieu of a baby, like something out of a sci-fi film—both his lungs burst, requiring the surgical insertion of tiny tubes into his chest to prevent air from accumulating in his thorax and suffocating him. He has seizures, periodic heart rate crashes, and brain bleeding that might permanently disable him. While the team at the hospital has been great, my wife and I aren’t sure how bad he is doing compared to other babies born this early and how much we should worry and how we’re going to pay our share of a bill that will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next few months.

Such an event gives you a perspective on life that you simply can’t imagine before. There is not a word in English that describes the epochal don’t-give-a-fuck we feel about almost anything from before. At the same time, there is an unspeakable calmness and purity of mind when you are trapped in a tempest beyond your reckoning or control. What we have is now. Literally nothing else matters.

Right now, I don’t know when or even if I will add to this publication again. To those of you I’ve known and interacted with, I just thought you should know.

Here is a photo of him grabbing his mother’s hand. In times like this, you’re always looking for silly things that require no real concentration, like making wallpaper, to occupy your mind.