Dylan

I had been teaching about 18 months in Queensland, Australia, when Dylan was born. After waiting two weeks from the due date, the doctors at Queen’s Hospital, Brisbane, decided to induce the birth. As we were inside and distracted for the prior 36 hours, we paid no attention to the storm warnings. As a father, it was a fight to be present at the birth.  I learned that I was not only the first father to ever be present at a birth at Queen’s Hospital, I was the first to show the remotest interest in doing so. We went through about eight doctors until we found one willing. Most felt that I would be a distraction.

So I was present and I did my best to stay out of their way, to “coach” a little by making the puffing Lamaze breathing sounds I was taught in class. They thought that I would be overwhelmed by the blood and such, but, as an Air Force medic, I had once actually delivered a child in the back of a Cadillac ambulance that was hurling through the desert at about 80 mph. This was when I was 19.

It was not the blood that overwhelmed me. It was the life that emerged. If I could stick a pushpin into the timeline of my life, it would be firmly placed at the moment that Dylan took his first breath. Yes, I felt love, overwhelmingly so. But what overcame me was a wave of responsibility. I was going to care for and protect this being. I was going to be my best for him. Well, the rest was pure joy.

Thus the world was so immediate inside that room that I did not notice the changing colors of the sky, the strange orange quality of the day. It was 7:30 in the evening when I was instructed to leave mom and baby to rest. I climbed into our VW (not a bug, but a strange sedan that I have only seen down under) and headed out the 25 miles or so to our flat on Moreton Bay. It was raining hard. In fact, I was a bit concerned that it was raining sideways, coming in the seals in the door. This was my first clue that there was a major storm, a tropical cyclone actually, racing down the coast of Queensland.  Our home in Redcliffe sat out on a peninsula. The access was to drive across the Hornibrook Highway. At the time, this was the longest bridge in the southern hemisphere. Wooden and 2.6 km long, just a few meters off the water, the locals called it the “Humpity Bump” bridge, as it buckled in places in its span of the bay. Lost in my bliss, I did not notice that mine was the only car on the bridge…until the first wave rolled over me and over the bridge. By the time the second one hit, I was well back into the reality of the situation. The second wave threw the car sideways, moving the VW to the far rail. Not wishing to orphan my son before he knew me, I slammed my foot as hard as I could on the pedal and raced across the bridge, half blind from the spray on the windshield, unable to see the road, but keeping an eye on one rail, not slowing until I was sure there was road under me.

Our flat was on Prince Edward Parade (I liked that they had parades instead of roads or avenues). The usual entry was to descend a long gravel drive, turn left at the sand and left again into our carport. Our flat sat above the garage, looking out on a thin strip of beach. But that night it was 20 yards out to sea, the water rolling under the building and slamming into the brick wall of the carport. I parked up the hill and entered the apartment over my neighbor’s roof. Unable to sleep and with no phone (there probably was not connection even if we had one), I sat up the entire night writing postcards to family and friends to announce the arrival of a healthy boy. I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted to share my joy. But all I could do was sit, 20 yards out to sea, with the waves crashing under me, and write.

In Welsh mythology, Dylan is a sea god, killed by accident. The sound of the roaring, groaning, and crashing of waves is the sea calling out for the lost Dylan. In another story, it might well have been his father.