On the arrival of Eliana Clay

Eliana Mary Clay entered the world shortly before four in the morning on Saturday, October 14, weighing just over seven pounds and measuring 19 inches. She came into the world with a blessedly calm disposition and a headful of very blonde hair, which became a minor obsession among the nursing staff at Missouri Baptist Hospital.

Here are a few random thoughts about her arrival:

1. She came out purple. No one had told me that she would, or, if they had, then I had long since forgotten. And it was not just her hands and feet; she was, from head to toe, an unequivocally purple person for the first several minutes of her life. This meant, in addition to the fact that she was wrinkled all over, that at first she did not look very different from a large prune.

2. As I met my beautiful prune baby for the first time, my dominant emotion was not joy or excitement or relief, although these were certainly all present. It was something more like awe, the awareness that, although I am responsible for the physical existence of this little person, she is (not will be, but already is) a fathomless mystery, an entire universe unto herself. She is mine; but even so she is now and forever will be Other. It is a privilege to know her.

I had, in short, witnessed the arrival of one bearing the Image of God.

In this way, birth is simultaneously a natural process (explicable by science and chock-full of bodily fluids) and also a miracle (the coming of one made in God’s image). In the birth of my daughter, I heard the faint but real echo of that greatest of miracles, the Incarnation of the perfect image of the invisible God: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

(That my daughter does very little at the moment besides sleeping and pooping does not change any of this).

3. It’s a cliché that women give birth because men couldn’t do it. It’s also true. My wife was in labor for 23 hours, and throughout she displayed tremendous courage and even humor. They would have had to render me unconscious fairly early on, if for no other reason than to preserve the sanity of the other people in the room.

4. One need not be a Women’s Studies professor, or a ‘liberal,’ or even particularly observant to know that our world is a dangerous place for women and girls. Short of physical and emotional assault, which happen every day, women suffer disrespect and indignity in a myriad of ways, both open and subtle. After all, my daughter was born into a society that just recently celebrated the life and legacy of Hugh Hefner.

(That said, my own failures to treat women with proper respect are real, and, especially now, ever before me).

Naturally my first impulse is to protect my daughter, an impulse given, perhaps, a distinctive flair by my Southern heritage. When a good friend greeted the news of my daughter’s birth by suggesting that I invest in a shotgun and a shovel, my first thought was that I would also need a decently-sized tract of uninhabited land.

At the same time, I want a daughter who grows up to be a strong and confident woman in her own right (I’m cognizant that strength and confidence look different for different people). I want her to know how to say “no” because she doesn’t have to say “yes,” her self-worth not being found in what men think or say about her. I want her to consciously reject the lies that our society tells her about her body – and her brain – usually in the effort to sell her stuff.

Moreover, I want her to excel, whether that’s  in homemaking or theoretical physics. My earnest desire is for her to surpass me, leading a life that is richer and fuller in every way. If I ever make it in the history books, I want it to be as the father of Eliana Clay.