At 2 months Marcelo begins to follow our faces and smile when he sees us. My vestigial, pre-dad impulses continue to make notes I won’t have time to follow up on. I mark time less and less as it marks me more and more. And as my colitis flares, I wonder how long this body gives me to let him know from his roots that he’s loved and that he’s born of love.
Marcelo Francisco Min Chavez was born 9:23PM EST on October 13, 2020 at Mount Sinai West in New York City. How to think/feel about the fact that from his grandparents’ generation to his, we’ve gone from almost no photos of early childhood to a sinuous stream whose source is the exact recorded time of his birth? And the C-section—a word often passed so casually in conversation—casts a dull, deep pain, ineradicable from palimpsest memory. The fatigue-addled body’s minding gives less and less to reflection and revision. In fits and starts spirit inertia, like the baby’s own growth. His oddly paced, inchoate breath-rhythms and animal noises guide me through strange terrain.