Small Child

Hospitals are strange places…

Just got back to Tuscaloosa after spending a couple of days in Atlanta. My youngest-older sister had her kid, a 7 pound, 3.5 oz. little boy by the name of James ‘MacRae’ English. Not even gonna lie… it was pretty cool.

When I got there, I was told to go straight to the hospital, as my sis had been in labor for a good long while. So I did what I was told, because that’s what you do in situations like these. And, without divulging too many details, I guess you could say things were moving along as they should. Never a big fan of seeing people I love in immense amounts of pain, but I guess it was a means…

So we waited. World kept turnin’. And we waited some more. World kept turnin’. And we waited even longer. World kept turnin’.

It was one of those surreal nights, even for me, the brother. Normally, my body has about a 3:00 am threshold, when I just can’t keep my eyes open anymore. But at that time on the morning of August 3rd, I was making phone calls, chatting with the “epiduraled” sis and “ready to be a Dad” brother-in-law, waiting wide awake for this thing to happen.

And it did… at a little after 5:00 in the morning, we were summoned to the room to meet the newest member of the fam. Relief. Happiness. Sleep deprivation. A beautiful combo.

It was all very strange, maybe because we had run the gambit. Which, in all reality, is a microcosm of the hospital experience. Hope. Dread. Joy. Fear. Worry. Tears. And, you know, hospitals are just weird places. One of those places where everyone is fighting to stay alive. A bittersweet mixture of holy ground and “last place I want to be.” Babies born. People dying. Thin spaces between this world and someplace else.

Hospitals are one of those places where you know the world keeps turnin’. Sure, it’s also somewhere that time stands still (which makes it even stranger), but there’s no doubting that, within those walls, life happens. In all of its various shapes and sizes.

It even happens in the form of a small child named MacRae, another one of life’s ‘howdidyadoits,’ something else happening within those world-spinnin’ walls.