The Second Best Thing I've Ever Done

Looking down into the eyes of my firstborn child, barely half hour old, it was hard not to think to myself, "How the hell did I get here?" Wrapped in a pink blanket, she was handed to me by a nurse who carried her out from the operating room where my wife had just undergone an emergency Caesarean section. One of her big blue eyes was fully open and the other wasn't too far behind, the top and bottom lids slowly parting like time-lapse photography of a flower in bloom. It was silent in the waiting room where we sat, she and I, staring at each other in total wonder. This was my introduction to fatherhood.