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Who is Ezra?
You wouldn't be at this
site if you didn't know who Ezra is. You either know him, his
parents or someone else related to him. Odds are this site is
too obscure to attract anyone other than those we brow-beat into
visiting it.
 To
me, Lemuel, Ezra's father, it's impossible to convey to anyone
who Ezra is without the predictable subjectivity of a new parent.
He's cute, enjoys laughing, hates having his arms put through
sleeves, likes sweet potato baby food and will charm 9 out of
10 people in the time it takes him to flash his coy smile.
Predictably subjective.
It's easier to convey "what
is Ezra". Not as in Ezra my offspring but Ezra the dramatic
life-altering phenomenon that will forever affect every minute
of my existence.
To say the inclusion of
a son in my life was a joyous matter is to over-simplify the
significance of having a child.
At his birth, as Ruth,
our midwife, and Lorelie, our doula(1), coached Aimee into pushing that
one last time, I became frightened.
I wasn't ready to be a
father. My life was in shambles and in no shape to welcome a
baby. Having a baby isn't like getting a speeding ticket or buying
a DVD-player despite a lack of funds or even getting a stupid
tattoo.
I didn't entertain romantic
notions of being a father. I didn't gloss over the reality of
having a kid with storybook ideals. Pragmatically speaking, a
baby is a nightmare, I thought.
A child is permanent. No
refunds, no do-overs, no pleading before the judge for a lighter
sentence. He was coming out and he was mine. No if, ands or un-diapered
butts.
When Ruth pulled the glistening,
purple baby from Aimee, he looked crumpled and angry. Imagine
Winston Churchill after being crushed by a giant blueberry.
While the reality of the
inevitable birth had struck me several times before like a bludgeoning
with a pipe, seeing Ezra for the first time was the deathblow
for my life as I knew it.
When
I looked at the baby didn't see him, the life that we had named
Ezra almost four months before his birth. I saw the midwife pull
out a new life for me with new goals, prerogatives, directions,
ambitions and motives. Aimee's last push brought a life out of
her and pushed my old one out of me.
 When
Ezra was placed in Aimee's arms, I looked at him with mixed emotions.
His 9-lbs. 1 oz crushed everything I was before May 28, 2001
at 1:39 AM.
I grabbed my Nikon and
took a few photographs choosing to hide behind the objective
distance cameras sometimes provide. I have used my camera as
an excuse to remove myself from a situation, opting for the role
of a passive observer over that of an active participant. On
this night, it only worked for a few minutes.
 I
set the camera down after having watched the staff clean Aimee
and Ezra. The nurses left and the CNA whisked Aimee into another
room and gave me the child to carry behind them. Instead of following
them right away, I sat down on a cusioned chair. I had Lorelie
take a picture of me before she stepped out after Aimee. 25 minutes
after his birth, I was alone with Ezra.
Wrapped in a hospital blanket
and wearing an inexpensive cotton cap, he wiggled only mildly
as he tried to make sense of the day's events.
He looked toward me and
I looked at him and we shared a moment of mutual confusion. After
a few minutes of my holding this new life it truly sunk in that
I was holding my own future.
In the months that followed,
the little guy's charms decidedly won me over. Not that I didn't
like him or love him from the start but I did fear the life I
now had to lead. The notion of being a father is still alien
to me but the idea of being Ezra's father now warms me.
To attempt to answer the
question of "who is Ezra" is impossible. Answering
"what Ezra is" is simple" - he's my new life.
- Lem
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