As I wait for the baby to come, I’ve gone into standby mode. I get a coffee early in the morning, enter my studio, set up my easel, mix my paints… and then get very little done. I’m working on some new paintings, wrapping up some older ones, but really, I am just waiting for the baby to come. The expected delivery date for the baby was last Sunday- a week ago from today. And so yesterday we spent the day walking along the ocean beaches, trying to evict my wife’s all too comfortable tenant.
I’ve been staying awake at night, staring out the window, more excited and eager to paint than I can describe. For the plans I have in painting, there aren’t enough hours in the day. I am looking forward to beginning a new wave of paintings in my studio. Maybe this surge of creativity is owing to all of the energy that comes from receiving another life into this world.
Being that I haven’t written in a while, I wish I had something of real substance to offer tonight. But, all I have to offer is this short little entry- I’m not scared, just eager and waiting.
My parents told me that I was born two weeks later than the doctor had predicted. The day before I was born, a Saturday, my parents were at work in their factory in a loft building on Canal Street. Way back in 1937, the only buildings with self-service elevators were residential. The elevator operator in the loft building where they worked went home at noon on Saturdays, and my parents discovered–too late–that they would have to walk down from the 6th floor. My father helped my mother down the stairs, and after that, down the stairs of the subway station. When they got home, my mother went into labor, and I was born the next day, Sunday, August 1.
I’m not recommending this as a method for inducing labor. I’m just recounting what I was told.