The Mighty, Mighty Quinn

OK - everyone take a breath.  Charity is still here, Robb is sane and Young Master Quinn Marshall has joined the party.

Photos online show tired parents and joyous siblings.

I was just getting back from a walk around the river next to the South Paris farmhouse I’m staying at these two days. Charity - with the nom de plume  Verity - was the subject of my last post, waiting for the storm to break (insert water joke here....).

Induction led to a C-section and a successful delivery.

So it all turned out well.

Tension. Release. Release. Tension.

The walk - notated here, for those who care, was next to a bit more heavy two-lane traffic than I like, led mostly though country roads, along the river that runs down from Bethel and the mountains - Snow Falls is part of its path, photos here.

Got to the end of the road, standing on the bridge spanning one of the many streams and rills that are so active because of the damp weather and checked my time - and saw a Facebook notification.

There was the post. A short one, not a lot needed to be said.

And so many possible horrible realities fell with a crash, looming shards of pain glistering, resolving, melting into a single crystal drop of joy.

I like words like "glistering" : "All that glisters is not gold".

As I leaned on the bridge over the stream at the end of the road I put my phone away - after pausing the walk time - and was pleased and surprised to find drops from my own eyes joining the stream .

I was really terribly, terribly afraid that I would lose Charity. The tears washed away the image of her loss and revealed my loss of my best friend, Eckart, last year.

He told me, amongst many clever - in addition to wise - things - that I was cursed with "vision" - that my intuitive sense was powerful enough to over-ride my experience of reality. Good for planning, bad for living in the moment. 

I smiled. More tears came, washing away his Germanic accent and revealing my cat, Sebastian.

I remembered holding him as the drugs took him over, took him away. "Good kitty. Such a good kitty".

He had come up to me at the Westbrook animal shelter, one from amongst a roomful of cats, walked up to me and started vocalizing directly to my face. Perfect cat for a composer. And the memories came up of losing my dog Toby Tyler when he was tortured by neighborhood kids when I was 8. I had to cry those out in the car before I could let Sebastian come home.

I laughed, thinking of the counter-melody he wrote by walking up and down on my piano and how that helped sell my first print anthem.  More tears, washing him away and revealing my Mother.

The sudden phone call. My youngest sister saying "Jim, we've lost our mother". Five minutes. Five minutes of sanity to hang up, fly out the door to the other end of Emery Street where my ex-girlfriend and her husband lived in the attic apartment of my musical mentor's house. Five minutes before I would be incapacitated where I stood.

And the whole group, ex, her husband, her mother, her dad - all had water on for tea, a big rocking chair in the Antebellum kitchen, a place for my contact lenses, a huge, huge blanket ready to hold me while my whole world was jackbooted into shards, bright tears, that  glistered, flowed and resolved ....

..... over and over, again and again, scene after scene as I stood on the bridge, adding my tears to the welcoming stream.

And finally, at the very end, a baby .... a mother and a father .... and a starting place of certainty, of love and grace.

I knew that baby was me, that what my parents saw in me at the moment of infinite possibility was how I saw myself now, at that moment, on that bridge, on that stream, at this time.

So that is how I welcomed Quinn Marshall into the world.  If I'm very clever I can see this inside everyone I meet, no matter what the context, whether I see joy, pain, love, indifference or all together.

You see, I'm cursed with vision. It's rather fun.

I started my timer and walked on my way.

S. Paris/Norway