ratify

Nikki's doctor says that our new child will join the human race from mid-July onwards.

Which mean I'll be a bundled of nerves, expecting the next cell call or text I get while I'm at work or at a meeting to be a summons to the hospital.

Things still feel a bit unreal right now, despite all the preparations and layette stuff, and all the kicking action from Nikki's belly. Like silence before momentous thunder. As I was with Sage, I need to see and hold the child in my hands before I ratify reality.

For now though, I am awash with a swirl of things, different flavors of anxiety, the greatest of which is this: I am afraid that something will happen to my wife (there, I've said it) because while C-Sections are routine, the writerly part of me is unable to switch off possibilities, though I wish I could.

Fear is terrible, worry is a sin.

Nothing will happen to her.

Everything will be fine and I'll come home with my wife and newborn daughter, sometime after the middle of this month.

That's how it will be - which is why I am writing this .

The only power I have is over fiction, over words, so I exercise it now.

I ratify this reality.