Solstice, 1947

Sixty-one years ago, in the middle of the night, he waited. He sat outside, his hands sweaty and inanimate, thinking about where he might get his next meal. He didn't pace; he didn't even get up to look out the window. He just sat in the waiting room, picking at a hole in the cuff of his pants.

Neither knew what to do with a baby, or what to do upon waking, really, and already there was so much to take care of, so many breakfasts to scorch, so many jobs to abandon. His mother, maybe, would help with the money, but what about the rest of it, whatever the hell the rest of it was? He had no idea. He tried to picture her as she was last summer, her lips the color of cotton candy, but all he could see was what he'd seen at bedtime--the butter-sponge feet; the rubber-ball middle; the dirty, shineless hair. Who were they now, he and she, and who were they becoming? And now that she was in there and he was out here, would they ever be the same? The doctors, they hadn't explained much, which was fine. He didn't need to know. All he needed now was this chair and to stop thinking. And maybe, because he'd earned it, a nap.

When the doctor came, he jumped up, involuntarily, and muttered, to his own surprise, that he was "so happy." And maybe he was, or at least sort of. There were worse things, he figured, and anyway, this was something--finally something--that he, with her help, had made for himself. It was something. She was something.

Outside, on the window ledge, the crows called madly. And the days, at last, began to get brighter.