Beginning

I was the first one to bear his weight. After two hours of Jill's pushing, Charlie's shoulders final cleared the birth canal and his slimy body plopped out into my waiting gloved hands. Given everything that could have gone wrong, I was remarkably composed during the birth. It was so animal down there. I forget that we're just naked animals. We take measures to hide it. We wear clothes. We shave. We talk. We reason. But just sit in on a birth and there's no mistaking that we and animals were derived from the same creator's brain.

He was quickly taken from me and given to Jill for a few bonding moments and a photograph. He laid naked under a hot light where I whispered it into his ear. Charles Abraham Shelton. I read Alex Haley's book Roots before Charlie was born and I always liked the idea of him being the first one to hear his own name. That's how Omoro Kinte had shared it with his son Kunta under a blanket of stars somewhere in the Gambia. Jill laid on the delivery table tended to by a busied nurse and her OBGYN. I filled the memory card on my camera. Charlie grunted for the first few minutes of his life. His eyes were puffy and oily from the salve the nurses applied to them. He was wide eyed though, and healthy. In the puffiness surrounding his eyes I saw my own father. Features from Charlie's mothers side included prominent cheekbones from his Grandpa and his Great-Grandma Mimi's mouth. His eyes were a milky gray-blue then. I didn't think they would change from that to hazel to the coffee brown in a clear glass color. He had a full round face like the man in the moon. He weighed in at 8 lbs. 6 oz, and was 20 3/4" long.

I took a picture of him taking a shower today. He has a beautiful little body. His skin is smooth and creamy. It looks like he has a half watermelon resting in his stomach. I gave him the regular spa treatment after leaving the shower. I wrapped him in a towel that smelled like conditioner and carried him to his green changing table. He just lies on the changing pad and repeats the word "need". I ask him what he needs. He says "need" again. I look around the room. I sort of expect someone else to be there. But it's just me and Charlie. The rocking chair sits idly while waiting for nighttime and a tired mother's ritual of rocking. The blade in the white fan is motionless and covered with gray dust. The entire house inflates when the air conditioner kicks on. Mounted on the wall are seven large block letters attached to his wall which spell "CHARLIE". Pointing to each letter I've come daily into the habit of teaching him the spelling of his own name. He hasn't been too interested until recently. Now he says "Letters. Touch." Beginning with the letter 'C', I leave the side of the changing table, touching and pronouncing each letter. I try to keep my weight on my leg nearest Charlie so I'm prepared to lunge across the room to keep him from falling on the floor. He's fallen once. He's pretty tough. I wonder what he thinks when I tell him to "brush it off"?

Jill leaves towels on her head after she showers. She looks foreign to me. I don't like big towels that much. Sometimes I use hand towels to dry off. I take hand towels to the gym to dry off after showering. A stocky Hispanic man with a mustache asked me if I forgot my towel the other day in the gym locker room. He asked me this while I was standing between two wall mounted air dryers. I had turned each blower head toward the center so they'd do some of the drying. He was wiping down with a big striped beach towel. It was much more towel than he needed. I am not going green either. But I could say I'm doing my small part for the environment since I often don't separate the recyclables for the trash truck.

Charlie and I watch the trash truck on Wednesdays unless there's been a holiday, then it arrives a day later. Our trash man is Angel. He has a moustache. Charlie says "MOOSE-tash". He gave us a Christmas card. He's nice. He waves. Charlie and I wait for him inside the house, behind the storm door. The blue trash truck's turning radius is wide. Angel has to do four, three point turns to pick up the trash at each of the four houses on our cul-de-sac.

Charlie knows his letters. We've been using flashcards since he was ten months old. The alphabet flashcards have pictures of famous, or not so famous works of art. Letter 'A' is for Angel. It is a painting of a woman with wings and a long flowing white gown against a dark background. I should replace it with a picture of Angel our garbage man and his big blue truck. Angel always wears a chartreuse vest and talks on the phone most of the time. I could paint a picture of him.

I get frustrated that Charlie can't draw very well. He just scribbles. He presses too hard. He colored his toenails with a black crayon. I got in trouble for letting him color on his unfinished wood blocks with a washable crayon. Apparently washable crayons don't wash off unfinished wood. He knows the shape of most of his wood blocks. In the morning I was too tired to get out of bed. I told him shapes of blocks and had him go get them for me. He had no trouble with triangle. (He pronounces it tra – babble)When I asked for a square shaped block, he returned with a rectangular block. I asked for a square again and he brought me a triangle. He knows his strengths. We had real problems when I requested a cylinder. I got out of bed when he came back with a hanger. I don't understand mental development. He can spot a circle shape on the wall at Starbucks without prompting, but he can't draw one. He can't even trace one. In fact, when I showed him how to trace a circle onto a piece of paper using the cylinder, was when he started drawing on the blocks. I think he is capable of so much, but I don't want to push him really hard. I don't want to be one of those parents. I want him to see a man like Angel who collects our trash and feel like I wouldn't judge him if that's what he ended up doing. But I do want to give him opportunities.

I just don't like to pack a full sized towel in my gym bag. My small gym bag gets crowded. I regularly carry a pair of fake crocs to wear in the shower. I have never owned a real pair of crocs shoes. I bought them two falls ago at the grocery store for five dollars. They are brown. I wore them when I stripped the paint off the front door. They are stained with cream colored paint and scarred by the paint stripping agent. That's okay. I don't wear them in public much.

Since staying at home, I've fallen into the habit of wearing the same clothes a couple of days in a row. Charlie is guilty of the same. Jill bought me a new pair of shorts so I'd wear something different. Charlie has too many clothes. I try to dress him cute for special occasions. Moms are always dressing their kids in cutesy outfits. In my opinion Charlie is studliest in a pair of camouflage shorts and a sleeveless top.

We went to the mall today. Charlie is fascinated by the handicap entrances. When we near the doors, he says "Push it. Button" in reference to the button which when pushed, automatically opens the set of doors. He was happy to push the button and wait the approximately 30 seconds for the doors to shut, then do it again. I stood outside with his stroller. He wore his Junior Zookeeper hat and a green, yellow and blue striped tee shirt. The tee shirt was stained down the chest and stomach with strawberry and banana smoothie from Starbucks. It was one of those moments where I reveled in being a full time father. Nothing to do. Nowhere to be. Watching my son open the handicap doors. The only responsibility I had was to keep him from pinching his fingers in the doors.

Jill is my wife. She is a good mom. Charlie adores her. The hardest part of my staying at home was knowing that Charlie was going to miss out on being with such a loving and nurturing woman. I don't for a second believe that she would be any less than ten times better and more capable of doing what I do. She was created to be a mother. We had run out of options.