A COYOTE'S TALE.

Originally written and published in the first issue of The Birth Project - Fall/Winter 2007

'I was asked recently to contribute some kind of written account, recalling the birth of my daughter for a collection of stories. I have been collecting my own stories for over a decade, stories about myself, about my daughter and all the people in between. I searched through all the boxes of saved letters, notes, poetry and the journals I had been preserving for years.

I realized quickly, that even with all the written letters, notes and musings that were still in a preparatory storage; even the ones that were classified as finished and already in the six completed journals I had never written anything about her birth.

There were piles of documents about the separation and divorce from her mother, losses of mutual friends, meetings of new ones, deaths, aging, maturing; but minus whatever her mother had stashed away in the baby book I had not written anything about the day of my daughter's actual arrival.

I settled into a chair then, and started writing about my memories and experiences of that day. I wrote out all the short snapshots, the little tales that I've always shared with other parents over the last thirteen years since that day.

I wrote about working in a car part factory with Jamaicans and Haitians, and they way they made the work day easier with song and laughter. I wrote about the intense heat produced by the six bus sized ovens we worked with. I wrote about my employer yelling my name across the factory floor and before his finished his call of "Its time!" - I already knew it was, and my entire body shuddered with fear and anticipation.

I wrote about making the normally half-hour drive home in just seventeen minutes, and how, in my panic, I forgot to turn off the headlights of the car. When we emerged from the apartment, the battery was dead; I had to call an ambulance to transport her mother to the hospital that was only about four blocks away.

All those memories made me recall that I both her mother and I had written letters to her for her baby book on the day of her birth. Unable to obtain a copy of what I wrote, I can only vaguely remember writing something about the experience of watching her be born was like coming through an amazing thunderstorm.

As it always happens, memories lead to more memories.

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