Meeting Ian

It's taken me a few weeks to get to know my son.

Since he was born on September the 1st, all I've really known is his condition, called Down Syndrome. His condition and the health problems surrounding it.

I was with Annie in the delivery room. I helped bring Ian into the world. I overheard the doctor whisper the words "Down Syndrome," not to me, because I was holding Ian, but to my wife, exhausted and spent by the delivery. I remember looking down at my son, and noticing his eyes for the first time. Were they always that shape, or did they change because the doctor uttered two little words?

Ian struggled for breath, and they rushed him to Intensive Care. Annie and I were left alone.

Alone.

That's what you first feel. At least I did.

I wept. I couldn't stop crying. I asked Annie to call my parents because I knew I couldn't say those words. "Ian has Down Syndrome."

The nurse came back and then I felt the second emotion: Shame. I'm sorry, nurse, that I put you through this by having a Down baby. I'm sorry that you have to try to be extra considerate and that you may have to stay late because my baby is having complications. I'm sorry that you are struggling not to pity me, that you have to keep saying over and over that he is a beautiful baby when you may or may not be thinking that he is a beautiful baby.

He is a beautiful baby, by the way.

The next time we saw Ian was through the plastic shield of an oxygen tent. Wires everywhere. Beeping alarms. Nurses scrambling, trying to reassure us while their forced smiles told us that we needed to be very worried.

The first night. I slept on the floor on a mat next to Annie's bed in the hospital room, the same room where Ian began his journey. We cried together. I woke up often. We visited Ian sometime in the early hours. It was still dark outside. I don't remember.

I went home to take a shower. The hospital was only 15 minutes away, and I need to clear my head anyway. My daughter, Silvi, was staying with my parents.

I was alone. I sobbed in the shower.

The next two weeks seem now to have passed quickly, but that is what happens to all painful memories. They take on a life of their own, transcend space and time, write their own narrative.

I read to Ian through his little oxygen tent. C.S. Lewis. Another man who understood loneliness, and grace. I looked into Ian's face, searching for clues. Who is he? What will he know? Will he love me? How will he live?

He is home now. The tubes are gone, the beeping alarms are quiet. He will live, the doctors tell us. I get to hold him. He sleeps in my arms.

I begin to see him for the first time. Ian. My son.

I begin a frantic search on the web. I must know. Everything. I buy books, lots of books. I reach out to other online writers in similar situations. Some of the responses give me hope, some enrage me. I'm sorry. I know you're trying to help. Words are slippery things, like a wet bar of soap.

It's only been a little over two weeks. How is it possible to be in such a strange land so quickly? It reminds me of the time Annie and I landed in Macedonia at night, and how shocked we were when we opened our hotel curtains in the morning to the sight of the tall, slender minarets sprouting from the many mosques decorating the city.

I don't cry any more. We took Silvi and Ian down to the lake last night. A perfect fall evening. People stopped and smiled and cooed and chatted.

Hi, Ian. I'm your dad. It's nice to finally meet you.