Birth - Vanessa Hsu

As he looked at the piercing jet lines across a deep blue up above, he thought it was fitting that the sky was cut in two, then three and finally four clean chunks, segments of blue clearness that all of a sudden were finite and compartmentalized. The beginning of things in his life, new fatherhood, moving to a new place, were starting only now to take shape, and although the same uncertainty ruled his life as it had thus far, now the new constraints broke it up in well-defined pieces of uncertainty.

He kept thinking, "roll with the punches, roll with the punches" and as much as figuring out what you were doing wasn't a possibility, pretending that you did was a necessity. His daughter had just been behind the doors at his back, and standing in the balcony of the hospital room, with Mary and his baby finally resting, he felt like having a cigarette. The moment reminded him of the first time he saw his parents as people, with their own fears, wishes and insecurities, and not just parents who knew it all. He wondered how long he could keep the facade on for his own daughter, it was his turn now to seem all-protecting and all-knowing, for as many years as possible.