From the Desk of Jamie Todd Rubin

As I mentioned earlier, Apex Magazine is collecting all of its fiction since 2008 into a very cool anthology of dark science fiction stories.  Descended from Darkness includes my short story, “Hindsight, In Neon” which appeared in the April 2009 issue of Apex Magazine.  It is scheduled to be available on December 1, 2009.

You can pre-order here:

http://www.apexbookstore.com/products/rubin-descended-from-darkness

There are some really good stories here including “Scenting the Dark” by Mary Robinette Kowal and “Organ Nell” by Jennifer Pelland.  If you like dark stories, I’d definitely urge you to pick up a copy.

Zachary turned 2 weeks old today and it’s pretty incredible how long these two weeks have stretched out.  Time has slowed down as if we have been on a rocket at near light speed and the world around us passed us by.

Zach had his two-week check-up this morning and it went swimmingly.  Your average baby tends to lose weight after birth and by 2 weeks, is back to their birth weight.  Zach was born at 7 pounds 1 ounce¹ and he was down to 6-1/2 pounds when we left the hospital.  Today he weighed in at 7 pounds, 2 ounces, adding an ounce to his birth weight.  This came as no surprise to us as he has a hardy appetite. No kidding.  This baby could eat Fat Bastard.  He also grew an inch, passing 19-1/4 inches in length.

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He makes faces and we’ve come to recognize those faces.  Our favorite face is one we call his “E.T.” face.  In this, he typically stretches, cants his head to one side and with his eyes closed, raises his brow sharply and draws in his lips.  It’s adorable.  He has also started to smile.  At first it was just on once side of his mouth, which is fairly common.  But gradually over the last week, we’ve also seen him make full smiles and even a giggle or two.  Common belief ascribes these smiles to gas, but I can tell you this is not true for two reason.  First, he does not smile when he’s got gas, as we learned very well this week.  Second, the most recent research seems to indicate that these early smiles are completely random–his neurological systems running various self-tests.  That’s not to say they aren’t adorable.  Our hearts melt every time he cracks a smile.

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On Tuesday, the stub of Zachary’s umbilical cord finally fell off.  I found it on the changing table on the Pack n Play when I went to change a diaper.  Apparently, there is a school of thought that this anatomical treasure is something to be kept, perhaps pressed into a baby book, bronzed, or something.  We threw Zachary’s away.  For one thing, neither of us are overly sentimental.  For another, I have my diary and this blog to record the incident; I don’t need the physical evidence.  Finally, as Rachel reminded me, their dog Cali managed to consume Ruby’s when it fell off and I could just imagine one of the cats getting it and batting it around the house as a little toy.

We did celebrate the event, however, by giving Zach his first bath.  We bathed him in the Whale baby tub that Carmen got for us.  He gave it mixed reviews.  When we first put him in the bath, he reacted like a gourmet food critic in a McDonald’s restaurant. However, as we wiped him down with the warm water, he calmed down a bit and he might have even enjoyed it a little.  He definitely seemed calmer after the bath than before, something we filed away for future reference.

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The bulk of this week, however, has centered around air: the air in Zachary’s lungs and the air in his belly.  Gradually, over the course of the week, Zach grew more and more agitated.  We could tell he was straining and that frequently resulted in gas. He did not like feeling gassy.  In fact, he screamed and boy oh boy does that kid have a set of lungs.  This might have been amusing at first but it quickly grew frustrating. For one thing, he would no longer sleep in the crib and we very reluctantly brought him into bed with us.  This is not something we want to do, but we were reassured somewhat when we were told he’s not forming any habits this early and sleeping in our bed would not, at this age, impair his ability to sleep on his own.  Nevertheless, having him in the bed made it very difficult for me to sleep.  It grew worse as the week progressed.  Instead of taking 20 minutes to get him to sleep after a feeding, it grew to 30 minutes, 60 minutes, even 2 hours!  His eating habits and even his diapers were unaffected by all of this.  He simply didn’t like having gas.

Finally, on Thursday, more for our own sanity, we took him to the doctor.  She checked him out and said all systems were functioning normally, but that he definitely had gas.  She told us to try 2 things: (1) pick up some infant Gas X and give him some when he grew fussy; (2) tilt his mattress at an angle so that his feet were lower than his head.  We tried both and for a wonder, it worked!  He slept in his crib for much of Thursday night and has been generally better ever since, much to our relief.

It meant a couple of particularly tough days, however.  Kelly and I are both pretty low key and easy going.  We could hold the baby and allow him to scream and cry in our arms and it wouldn’t bother us too much.  But after a while, just the screaming gets to you.  We would therefore hand him off every once in a while.  And I got even less sleep.  When he was in the bed, I was nervous enough about rolling into him that I slept very lightly and not very well, waking up every few minutes.  When he was in the crib, I would lay in bed wondering if he would start crying any minute.  And of course, just as I started to doze off, Zach would start up.

Over the course of the week, I think I was up to watch the sun come up 5 days in a row.  Kelly slept a little better.  It really made for an odd week.  With snippets and snatches of sleep here and there, I’d manage five hours in a 24 hour period, but most of it was either between 6 am and 10 am or some time in the afternoons.  It made the days go by kind of fast and the nights go by kind of slowly, just the opposite of my normal perception of day and night.

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We have been taking Zach out for walks in the evening and have even worked our way back up to our normal evening walk, 1.5 miles long.  Kelly has recovered very fast from the C-section and she manages the walks with no problem.  I enjoy pushing Zach in the stroller.  He sleeps well when he’s in the stroller, or when he’s in the car.

Thursday evening, joyous after seeing the Gas X work for Zachary, we ventured out to Shirlington for dinner.  We packed Zachary into the stroller and walked to Shirlington and had dinner at Capital City Brewery.  Zach slept through the entire sojourn.

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I think we are both still in awe of the little guy.  There are still moments when we both think, “Hey, let’s go for a walk” (or to the store, or to a movie) and then remember that we’ve got the little guy now and can’t just go venturing out.  And despite the Gas X, he still gets a little fussy.  He was fussy tonight, for instance.  I had come up to the office to do some organizing (filing away contracts, clipping out articles I’d marked for story ideas, etc.) and I heard him crying.  Nothing Kelly had done was working, so I brought him up to the office with me.  I put on my 80s box set in shuffle mode and we sat in here listening to 80s music.  I sing the songs to him, altering the lyrics so that as much as possible, the songs were about Zachary.  We’d dance around the room from time to time.  It took an hour or so, but eventually, it put him to sleep.  It was a lot of fun, however, and in my mind, a powerful bonding experience for me.

In a way, it was odd.  I grew up with 80s music.  Many of those songs remind me of the dark days of 7th grade back in 1985 when my body was being infused with a pharmacy of hormones, much against my will.  I was just a kid.  Now I have a kid.  I wonder what his 80s music will be like.

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Despite all of this, I managed to (a) finish reading a book, (b) start reading another book, (c) start a new story and (d) get an existing manuscript out in the mail.  I finished reading Jack McDevitt’s Polaris and started reading The Lord of the Rings.  I haven’t read that book since I was much, much younger.  In fact, when I’m trying to calm Zach down and we are sitting in the glider, I read to him from that book.  I really like reading to him, despite the fact that he can’t understand a word I’m saying (yet).  It does seem to calm him and furthermore, it allows me to practice reading aloud so that when he can understand me, it will make for a more enjoyable experience for him.  It has also got me thinking about all of the wonderful books I read growing up and how I can’t wait to read some of those books to Zach (or even better, when he can read them himself).

The new story is an attempt at humor on my part.  And it features on the critical appurtenances of new parenthood:  a baby monitor.

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In the coming week, my parents arrive to spend a week with us and meet their newest grandchild.  On Monday, I go back to work (part time).  I’ll be working part time for the next 6 weeks and then, around the second week in August, I’ll be back to work full time.

In the meantime, I’m trying to enjoy the time I’ve got with Kelly and Zachary as much as I possibly can.

See you next week!

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1. Of all the English measurements, I dislike English mass the most.  It makes absolutely no sense and I can only hope that Zachary grows up with the far superior Metric system of measurement, if only for mass.  3.2 kilograms is far easier to say than 7 pounds and 2 ounces.

I am now the proud owner of an Amazon Kindle.  I’ve been toying with the idea of getting one for a while, and on Thursday, I broke down an ordered one and it arrived yesterday.  I paid for it, in part, with the payment from my last story sale, which has a gratifying symmetry to it.

In the past, I’ve had mixed experiences with eReaders, but so far, I really like the Kindle.  Reading from it feels like reading a book, as opposed to reading off a screen.  I purchased Jack McDevitt’s Polaris, and that is the first book that I am reading on the machine.

But why now?  I think there are several reasons:

1. Zachary was born on June 12, 2009, which is the day that analog TV signals went bye-bye and broadcast TV is now all digital.  Zachary will grow up as a true digital native.  Printed books will be a potential luxury for him, while electronic books will likely be de rigeur.  Not wanting to be a parental luddite, I thought I should get with the program.
2. I have around 1,200 books in my current library.  Many of these books make up an important part of a collection (mostly science fiction), but many more of them are books I bought to read, read once, and then they sit there taking up space.  Since we are looking to move and I am not looking to add to our encumbrance, the Kindle makes sense as a nice way to buy and read books without taking any additional shelf space (the Kindle 2 can hold about 1,200 books, so I can double my collection size without added weight).
3. There is something to be said for the instant gratification of being able to download a book in 60 seconds.
4. The price of most of the books is about half of what you’d pay in the store, so it saves money.  I’d estimate I’d need to buy 20 books on the Kindle before I’ve paid for the device in the savings from the discounted prices alone.
5. I have a number of magazines that accumulate each month and take up more space.  It turns out that most (but not all) of these magazines are available on the Kindle and I am looking to see if it is possible to change my subscription from print to Kindle.  Over time, I imagine more will become available.
6. It’s good for the environment.  It uses very little electricity and consumes no trees in the form of paper.
7. Sometimes it’s fun just to get a new gadget, you know?

I’ve read the first two chapters of Polaris in hardcover form (from the library).  I plan on reading the rest of it on the Kindle.  That would make it the first book that I started in paper form and finished on the Kindle.  I think that McDevitt’s Seeker will be the first full book that I read on the Kindle.

In which our hero makes his debut appearance and spends his first week on Earth getting used to all those crazy humans.

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It wasn’t like TV.  No water broke.  There was no mad dash to the hospital.  After a somewhat restless night of sleep, Kelly and I casually drove to Inova Fairfax hospital at 5:45 am.  We hit no traffic.  We ran into no bad weather.  We avoided flat tires and other road hazards.  And we arrived at the hospital t 6:05 am, and checked in with all of the drama associated with a dental cleaning.

The lobby was mostly empty and after signing 3 dozen forms, we made our way back to the blue elevators which we took up to the third floor “bunny” desk.  After a few minutes, we were whisked back into the pre-op area and things started to get a little more exciting.  Kelly was hooked up to the monitors so that we could hear the baby’s heart beating and see the contractions on the screen.  We were visited by an army of doctors, nurses and interns, all of whom asked questions and briefed us on what would happen.  At about 7:45, we were wheeled just down the hall to the operating room.

Kelly was taken into the OR and I waited outside, trying to put on the various sterile gowns and shoe covers and hair nets and masks.  I waited patiently, but I was obviously an excited and expectant father-to-be.  Everyone who passed me in the hallway congratulated me.  Finally, after about 15 minutes, I was ushered into the OR.

Kelly was already prepped.  Our anesthesiologist was speaking to her as I sat down and before we knew it, they’d already started the C-section.  It was only a few minutes before we heard one of the doctors say, “Okay, the baby is coming out, you are going to feel some pulling.”  Kelly felt some pulling.  After a moment, Kelly said, “How come the baby isn’t crying?”

“He’s not completely out yet,” the doctor replied.  But then, a few seconds later, we heard the baby start to cry.  It’s hard to describe what I felt at that moment.  It was surreal, a feeling that would stick with me for the rest of the day.  I thought I would be overwhelmed with emotion, that I might cry or something, but I kept it in check somehow, mainly because I wanted to take in everything.  The doctors held the baby up above the sterile screen and we saw the baby for the first time, covered in all kinds of gunk.

Zachary Paul Rubin had arrived.

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We got the stats.  He weighed in at 7 pounds, 1 ounce.  He was 19 inches long.  He had ten fingers and ten toes.  He had my nose, and Kelly’s eyes and cheeks.  He had a good strong baby voice.  His eyes were closed for the most part, but they would occasionally flicker open and shut and you could catch a glimpse of the dark midnight blue color.  He sneezed once or twice, which was very cute.

Meanwhile, they continued to sew up Kelly.  They handed me Zachary and I sat next to Kelly as they wrapped things up.  It all seemed to go pretty quickly.  The operating room was cold and I wore shorts, but I didn’t notice any of it.  I held Zachary, swaddled in a blue hospital blanket, and made sure that Kelly could see him.  A few minutes before they finished sewing up Kelly, they took Zachary and me to the recovery unit where we waited for Kelly to arrive.  We spent about 2 hours in the recovery area before heading to our private room.

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It was around 11 am before Kelly’s parents could see their grandson, but I’d run down to tell them that everything had gone well after we got to recovery.  Once we were in our private room (room O-328), they were able to come up and join us.  That was just before noon on Friday, June 12, 2009.  We stayed in the hospital until about 6 pm on Monday and most of it was monotonous (and sometimes cold, since the AC in our room was on overdrive).  Still, during that time we were visited by many, many excellent doctors and nurses, to say nothing of friends and family.  And during that time, we got to know little Zachary.

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Zachary Paul Rubin.  We named him Zachary because we liked the name.  We didn’t want to choose one of the really popular names like Jacob or Emma–not that there is anything wrong with those names; they are just really common.  We wanted a name that’s been less common, but still a good, solid name.  We named him Paul because it’s a name shared by both our grandfathers, so there is a nice symmetry there.  And yes, we call him “Zach”.

The first two days were long ones for me.  Kelly was able to get a lot of sleep because she was mostly stuck in bed after the surgery.  We were in a “family centered-care” ward, which means that unless we specifically ask for help, we did everything ourselves, feeding, cleaning, swaddling.  Over the course of the first 51 hours I got 6 hours of sleep.

We began to learn Zach’s personality.  After a few days, we knew the difference between when he had a dirty diaper and when he was hungry.  Over time, he would flutter his eyes open and look around for a while, then close his eyes.  As the days went on, he kept his eyes open longer and longer.  On our third night, we actually got five straight hours of sleep between 1 and 6 am.

It took a while before I even thought about the fact that I was now a parent.  My whole focus was on making sure I could take care of the little guy.  Kelly was the same way.  Kelly recovered quickly from the C-section.  She was eating solid foods the evening of the surgery and was up and moving around the same day.  She was cleared to go home before Zachary was.

We were hoping to go home on Monday.  The main hang-up was that Zachary was a little jaundiced and they wanted that to clear up.  After a few more checks by nurses and doctors, Zachary was cleared to go home and we finally piled into the car around 6 pm on Monday evening.

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In the nearly three full days we’ve been home, Zachary has already changed.  We are gradually trying to get him onto a schedule so that he can sleep through the night sooner.  Kelly has been breast-feeding him and he has even been growing a little.  We went for his first doctor’s appointment and they told us he’d gained an ounce since he left the hospital.  He was up to 6 pounds, 8 ounces.

We slept down stairs the first few days and even that was heaven compared to sleeping in the hospital.  Last night we finally slept in our bed and Zachary slept in his crib for the first time.

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I love holding the little guy.  Kelly will hold him for a while, and then I’ll hold him for a while.  When he opens his eyes and looks at you, it’s just wonderful!  We can tell by his mannerisms when he wants to eat, when we need to change his diapers.  We are going to give him his first sponge bath today.  He is a joy to have, despite the sleepless nights.  We love the little guy!

Stay tuned and find out what happens over the next week.  Episode 2 arrives on Friday, June 26.

Last night’s dream:

I’m about to leave the office when a researcher comes by and says he needs immediate help with the “100% computing” project, which has just been approved. (I have never heard of this project, but I always try to be helpful, even if it is not in my area.) He walks to the room across from my office, but no one is there so he comes into my office. “I need your help,” he says.

“Unfortunately,” I say, “Well, unfortunately for you, I am about to leave. I’m getting married. No, I’m already married. I’m having a baby tomorrow!”

And so we are. As I write this, it is 26 hours before our scheduled C-section. We are having a baby tomorrow! (The phrase, “having a baby” sounds awkward now. We already have the baby; he’s simply in storage at this point, and he’s coming out of storage tomorrow–which doesn’t sound any better.) The whole idea has become more abstract over the last week or so, which is a bit surprising as I had expected it to become more real in my mind. Despite the obvious signs, it is still hard to imagine that we’ll have a baby to take care of tomorrow. It’s caused a flurry of vignette-like thoughts about the past and future to pass through my mind, as though I’m bouncing around in time.

35 years ago, roughly this time in June: I’m sitting at a small wooden table in the family room of our house in Somerset, New Jersey. My feet barely reach the blue tiled floor. The table is off toward one corner of the room, kind of near where the front windows are. There’s a pack of crayons on the table and some paper, and my uncle is teaching me how to color with my left hand. (I was already clearly right-handed at this point.) There is some commotion and I realize that some people are coming to the front door. It’s my mom and dad, and with them, they have my new baby brother…

If there is a common phrase that all parents seem to use with respect to the birth of a first child, the most frequently used phrase is most certainly, “Your life will change forever.” I’ve already written about the ambiguity of this statement. It implies both the good and the bad. But it is also a blatantly obvious statement. I’m not sure how anyone could go through the 40 weeks preceding the birth of a child and think that their life would ever be the same. It is also a vague statement. How much change? How quickly? I can’t help asking these questions. It’s in my nature. I need some kind of baseline to judge the amount of change. There are ways of doing this.

• Sleep. In the week before Zachary’s arrival, I averaged 9.5 hours of sleep each night. My actual average is probably less than this. It’s skewed by the fact that I got 13 hours of sleep on Friday night.
• Reading. I’ve read, on average 30 books per year in the 14 years preceding Zachary’s birth. Since books vary in length, you can say that on average, I’ve read about 5 million words per year.
• Writing. Despite my best efforts, I only manage to complete 2 or 3 stories a year. I’ve sold two stories. I’ve got two in the works.

I’m sure there are other subtle changes, but these are some solid metrics that I can look at say, a year from now, and see just how much my life has changed, at least with respect to how much time I spend on these things.

We were finally home from just about the best day of my life. We’d gone to the Hayden Planetarium and I got a first hand look at the cosmos in a way that I’d never seen it before. I might only be five or six years old, but I already considered myself a professional astronomer, at least among my circle of friends, all of whom were amateurs at best. I even got a toy at the museum gift shop: a model of a 747 with a space shuttle that hooked to it’s back. I mean, how cool is that! We were walking toward the front door of the house and I stopped my Dad. “Daddy,” I said, “I have a question.”

“What is it?”

“I know that when boys grow up they start calling their Daddy’s ‘Dad’. But I was wondering if it was okay if I always called you ‘Daddy’?”

Last night, I cleaned the house in preparation for Zach’s arrival. I vacuumed the entire house. I cleaned all three bathrooms. I cleaned out the litter boxes and took out the trash. I mopped the floors in the kitchen and bathroom. All the while, I listed to my “Road Trip” playlist on my iPod. And I sang along with the songs the entire time. When I was finishing up, it occurred to me that it would be a little while before I’d be able to do that again. With a baby in the house, I’d have to learn to suppress my natural urge to sing out loud. After all, babies tend to sleep a lot and I wouldn’t want to wake him up. In fact, my natural speaking voice can quickly grow loud when I grow excited or enthusiastic about something. I’ll have to be much more aware of that now than I ever was before.

I loved Milton the Monkey. In my Kindergarten class, we learned the alphabet through a wonderful flip-chart story about the adventures of Milton the Monkey. Each page was an adventure for Milton, and his adventures always ended up with us learning a new letter of the alphabet: what it looked like and how it sounded. It turned out to be not only fun, but pretty easy. After all, the letter almost always sounded like the name off the letter. An ‘A’ made an ‘ah’ sound; a ‘B’ made a ‘buh’ sound. It couldn’t have been long after this that I was sitting in the dining room of our New Jersey house, leaning up against a wall near the linen closet with a book in my lap. I remember looking at the words in the book and seeing lots of letters. A whole lot of letters! I thought back to Milton the Monkey and how the letters made sounds. The first group of letters I tried stymied me: T-H-E. Tuh-hee. Tuh-hee! The problem was I didn’t recognize any word that sounded like tuh-hee. I figured it was an adult word, shrugged my shoulders and moved on to another one: L-O-V-E. I tried sounding it out: Luh-oh-vee. That didn’t sound right, but I already knew from some of the older kids that sometimes an E was silent at the end of a word. So I tried again. Luh-ove. Nope. Try again. Luh-ove. Luhove. Luhove. I had not idea what luhove was. But I did know what “luv” was. Could it be that L-O-V-E sounded like LUV? Somehow, I knew this was right, and I grew incredibly excited. I’d just learned how to read my first word. And I was still in kindergarten!

I sometimes wonder if certain aspects of parenting will be easier for us that it was for our parents. Zachary will be a true digital native, for instance. In fact, tomorrow, June 12, analog TV signals go away, replaced by all-digital signals. While the digital age has happened in my lifetime, I can remember some years before ever having a computer, a cellular phone, an iPod, a DVR, a GPS. For Zachary, it will be different. He will certainly have a cellular phone–or whatever the future equivalent is. Social networking systems, like Loopt, for instance, will likely be more sophisticated over time. When he goes out with friends, it will be easy to know his exact location at any moment, without intruding upon him. This must certainly add a layer of security to the worry that every parent must experience when their children are away from home. On the other hand, I think of myself as pretty technically sophisticated, but I can foresee the say (despite being a science fiction writer!) when Zachary turns to me in dismay, shaking his head and muttering, “iPhones are so 2025, Dad. When are you going to get a BrainChip?”

Kelly and I hoped to get to the movies one last time before Zach was born. We wanted to go see Up. But who knows when we’ll get to the movies again. And so the last movie that I saw in the theater, prior to being a father will have been Star Trek. I have an odd fascination with these “lasts and firsts”. I’ve often wondered, for no good reason, what the last meal my parents had was before I was born. That I have a diary (and blog) makes it easy to reflect on some of these things. My last lunch with work friends, Todd and Karl, prior to Zach’s arrival, was yesterday. We had sushi. The last book that I finished was Ray Bradbury’s We’ll Always Have Paris. The book that I am reading now (at the time Zach will be born) is Jack McDevitt’s Polaris. The last place we traveled to was Richmond, Virginia for the RavenCon science fiction convention. The last time I took a plane trip was in March, to Santa Monica, for a work retreat. I don’t see all my friends enough. We’re too scattered. I saw Eric back in February. I saw Andy and Lisa back in March. I saw Dan and Megan in October. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Norm and Vicky. I don’t see my brother and sister enough. I saw Jen and Jason in May. But it was back in October when I saw Doug and Rachel. The next time I see all of them I’ll be a dad.

Alternate-future history: “The taxi just pulled up out front,” I say to Kelly, watching the three people climb out of the cab and walk slowly toward the front of our townhouse. Kelly reaches into the crib to scoop up Zachary, who is celebrating his 15 day birthday today. I dash down the stairs, skipping three steps at a time, and throw open the front door. Mom and Dad are standing there smiling, hugs all around. And standing there with them, a silly grin on his face, is Grandpa. He reaches for me with his unusually long arms and gives me a hug. We all go upstairs, where Kelly is waiting with Zachary.

“Mom and Dad,” I say, “meet your grandson, Zachary.” Everyone hovers around, making much of the startled little guy, who, all things considered, is holding up pretty well. “Grandpa,” I say, “you know what you and your great-grandson share in common?”

“What’s that?” he says.

“Well, your name is Paul and his middle name is Paul.”

I wait for a witty response from him, but none is forthcoming.  He can’t seem to get any words past the tears.

There is something surreal about the whole experience of becoming a Dad–or a parent for that matter.  For 37 years I have been a spectator–and sometimes a color-commentator–to the whole sport of parenting.  The best way that I can describe it is that parents seem like a different species to me.  I don’t mean this in any negative way, I simply mean a parent seems so different from my world that I find it incredibly difficult to imagine myself in that position.  It’s like trying to imagine myself in my cat’s position.  The comprehension simply isn’t there.  There is also something existential about entering an operating room as a husband and leaving it an hour later as a husband and a father.  I’ve found over the last two days that I may not be able to maintain my usual calm, objective self.  Thinking about Zach’s impending arrival while cleaning the house last night, I found myself on more than one occasion on the verge of tears.  But I take that as a good sign.  Biology is a remarkable thing, and perhaps the greatest experiment that two people can perform is taking two cells and eventually turning them into a relatively well-behaved college graduate.  That we have the power to do this is remarkable.  It’s what makes history so fascinating.  Everything we do and everything we know is because, at some point two people introduced a pair of cells to one another…

Sunday morning breakfast.  Mom made pancakes and they were now stacked neatly the brown pancake-warmer.  The four of us sat around the kitchen table.  It’s possible this was the day that I ate 50 1/2-dollar-sized pancakes.  I’m not sure.  My memory isn’t that good.  We’d found out not too long ago that Mom was going to be having another baby.  Everyone thought that this one would be another boy, but I was certain it would be a girl.  My reasoning was quite simple:  my odds of picking something different was equal to the odds of everyone else, so why not?  Always curious, I asked a simple question at that breakfast.  I don’t remember exactly how it was worded.  I might have said, “Mom, where do babies come from?”  Or I might have asked, “How are babies made?”  I tend to think I asked the former since there was nothing in my store of knowledge that babies were in any way “made”.  They simply grew in Mom’s tummy until they were ready to come out.  So there it was, “Where to babies come from?”

I remember my Mom’s answer, though.  She said, “When we decide we want another baby, your Dad puts a pill in my tea and soon after that the baby starts to grow.”

Looking back on it, I find that it is a very apt metaphor.  Unfortunately, as a 6-1/2 year old boy, I knew nothing of metaphor, and I am embarrassed to admit how long I believed that my Mom’s answer was the literal truth.  Most kids pick up the basic facts of life “in the gutter”.  A few years later, I learned the basics “in the gutter” after insisting to some friends that my Mom’s description of baby-making was scientifically accurate.  (Back then, I was not know for my sagacity.)

Today is my last day at work for 2 weeks.  The next time I am back in the office, I’ll be a Dad.  Kelly will be a Mom.  Our cats will have a new younger sibling.  Our parents will be grandparents all over again.  Our siblings will have a new nephew.  Our nieces and nephews will have a new cousin.  My Grandpa used to say that family was the most important thing.  He saw things through rose-colored glasses.  Family could be frustrating.  They could be just as silly as anyone else.  But I’m beginning to see what he meant, I think.

So what do I think about our lives changes forever tomorrow?  I’m not too worried about it.  I think we’re prepared.  We’ve had good teachers.  I’m just so excited for Zach’s arrival.  But setting aside that excitement, I suppose I could best describe how I feel by quoting the Eagles:

“I’ve got a peaceful, easy feeling.”

There really have been some Frequently Asked Questions these last few weeks, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to address them here.

1. Are you nervous?

I’m not.  At least, not yet.  Everyone tells me that instinct will take over and I trust that will be the case.  So I have no reason to be nervous until instinct doesn’t take over.  I’ll worry about it then.  I had a dream last night that the baby was born and I held him for the first time.  He was bigger than I thought he would be.  He also pooped on me.  What really upset me, however, was that I didn’t remember his birth, and Kelly told me that I was sleeping and she didn’t want to wake me up, so she let me sleep through it.  I wasn’t too happy about that.

2. How is Kelly doing?

She is doing great.  She has been great throughout the pregnancy, and a real trooper, too, considering how uncomfortable it must be to grow a baby inside you.  I think she is ready for the baby to arrive.  Over the last few days, I have occasionally heard her tossing and turning at night, so I imagine things are still pretty uncomfortable when trying to sleep.  But she is still active (we went for a walk in the rain last night).  And even if she’s physically uncomfortable, she’s as cheerful as ever.

3. Do you know what you are having?

Yes.  We are having a baby.  (Duh!)  Oh, you mean the sex of the baby?  Yes, we are having a baby boy.  (As a side note, this question is often framed as: “Do you know what you are having, or are you going to be surprised?”  As I’ve said before, finding out the sex of the baby could be considered a surprise, whether you wait until he or she is born, or you find out early.  But the more I think about it, the only real surprise in the whole thing is if you found out you were having something other than a boy or girl.)

4. When is he due?

His official due date is June 19, 2009.  However, Kelly is having a scheduled c-section on Friday, June 12, which is just two days from now.

5. Are you excited?

It’s been building up gradually, but I found that when I woke up this morning, I’d passed some critical point at which the excitement is feeding on itself and growing, in much the way a star is fuel through nuclear reactions.  I imagine by tomorrow I’ll be coming out of my skin.  I’m going to be a dad–me, the guy who can still clearly remember days back to when he was two years old himself.  I haven’t yet been able to wrap my head around it.

Okay, I missed a few days. It’s been busy. I’ve been ramping up for a major software roll-out–which was pushed at the last minute and is now on at least a 3 week hiatus.  With three days left, I thought I should mention how things will proceed going forward.  Here is the plan:

1. An email will go out to friends and family as soon as is reasonably possible after the baby is born.  This should be sometime on Friday.
2. A twitter update should follow shortly after that–which is automatically relayed to Facebook.
3. Phone calls will go out to those people to whom we promised phone calls sometime in the afternoon, once we’re settled in our room.
4. A blog entry will appear sometime late Friday.
5. Going forward, my plan is to write a weekly blog entry on the baby.

I’m still in the office working full days every day, which makes this whole things seem kind of surreal.  It seems like business as usual, but we know that a lot is going to change in the coming days.

When I was a kid, a week was the best unit of measurement for highly anticipated events:  a week until my birthday!  A week until summer vacation starts!  Less than a week until we head to Grandma and Grandpa’s.  I think that’s still true.  One might think that a day is even better, but in most cases, with only a day left, we suddenly find there are too many things that have to get done to make that last day of anticipation enjoyable.  No, a week is the best.

And so now we are a week away from the baby’s arrival and I think the anticipation has risen to a requisite pitch.   All day long I was thinking:  one week from right now, he’ll be (one hour, four hours, ten hours) old.  One week from now, Kelly will be feeding him, or I will be holding him.  It’s better than the anticipation for any school holiday or summer vacation.

What I think will be very interesting is to see what I write about a week from now, see if I view things any differently than I thought I might.  I will try to remember, a week from now, to link back to this entry as a kind of before/after comparison.

In the meantime, all I can think is: oh boy, oh boy, one week to go!

I’m nothing if not cheerfully self-appreciative, so it will come as no surprise to those who know me that I think I will make a very good parent.  I used to wonder, fleetingly, if I would be a good parent, but I quickly realized that of course I would and there is one main reason for this:

I have a degree in Parenthood. 

Most of us do, and we just don’t realize it.  I have studied parenthood from the perspective of a son for the last 37 years.  And let me say for the record that I have had excellent teachers.  It seems to me, therefore, that any time I’m stuck for what to do, all I have to do is flip back through my tenacious memory and ask, “What did Mom or Dad do with me in this situation?”  There can be no finer example than that set by my folks, and so of course, that seems like the natural place to start.  This doesn’t mean I will do things exactly how my parents did them.  After all, we grow up to become our own person.  I’m sure that my folks didn’t raise us exactly how their parents did (otherwise, I would still be sitting at some long lost dinner table with uneaten food on my plate).  We all have our quirks, and we also seek to improve upon what we learn.  Nevertheless, how my parents raised me (and Doug and Jen) serves as an excellent atlas for navigating the parental world.

We are into the single digits!

Time is moving quickly and slowly.  At work we are in the midst of a massive application rollout which takes place this weekend.  That has been making the workdays go by quickly.  But the nights can’t seem to slide by fast enough.

I think both Kelly and I have been stewing in anticipation.  We are both very excited for the baby’s arrival, but I have a few observations of things that I’ve been thinking about in the last week:

1. I don’t feel like a Dad yet.  I’m not sure if there is some chemical change that takes place in your brain once the baby is born.  I’ll let you know.  But for now, I feel pretty much the same as I’ve always felt.  In other words, I feel like me.  I’m so excited for the baby’s arrival, but 9 days out, it is almost as if it’s happening to someone else, not me.  (In a real sense, it is happening to Kelly, since she is the one carrying the baby.)
2. I keep thinking about how excited I am for the baby’s arrival and to bring him home.  Of course, in a real sense, he is already home, albeit within Kelly’s belly.  But at 38 weeks, he’s not too much different than he will be 9 days from now.  He’s already able to hear voices, and though he hasn’t “seen” the house yet, he spends most of his time in the house.  It’s funny how we build up in our heads bringing the baby home–to a place he’s already been for the last nine month.  The only difference is the 5 layers of intervening skin and muscle.
3. Lots of people have told us how our lives will change forever once the baby is born.  I’m skeptical about the intent of some of them.  For one thing, I think our lives “changed forever” on the day the baby was conceived; we just didn’t know it yet.  Second, while most people tell us that our lives will change forever, they do it with a sinister kind of ring in their voices, implying all of the negative parts of raising a child like sleepless nights, worries, anxiety, frustration.  What’s interesting is that only a very few people who say this actually add, “for the better.”  I don’t doubt that our lives will change forever (or as long as they last anyhow) for the better, but I find it interesting that people tend to focus on the negative, rather than the positive.

In some ways, I liken the experience so far to getting my pilot’s license.  There was a point a month or so before my first solo flight when it seemed to me I simply couldn’t imagine myself flying a plane all alone with no one there to help me out.  I didn’t feel like a pilot.  But came the big day, and I did it, and it was one of the high points of my life.  In the same way, while I don’t feel like a Dad yet, I imagine that once little Zach is born and I am holding him in my arms (or watching Kelly hold him in hers), the feeling will come and along with it, another high point in my life.

Stick around and find out.  I plan on posting some thoughts about Zach’s upcoming arrival each of the remaining 9 days before the Big Day.  Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about how I feel about becoming a parent and why I don’t feel complete overwhelmed (yet).

For those who don’t know, 37 weeks is a watershed moment in any pregnancy.  At 37 weeks, the baby is considered “full term.”  Technically, it means that his lungs are fully developed, but I like to think that he’s done cooking, and is now just staying in the oven to keep warm.  Moreover, 37 weeks is a milestone for the parents-to-be.  To explain, I have to digress slightly.

To a child, parents always seem partially insane.  This insanity grows noticeably more subtle as the child gets older.  Think about this and you’ll see that I am right.  When I was young, my parents would tell me not to do something and when I asked “Why not?” one or both would reply with, “Because I said so.”  Children learn logic quickly.  Just about any child, whether or not they know the technical term, realizes that “Because I said so,” is at best an ad hominum argument.  Over time, we simply come to accept that it is a mild form of insanity.  There are endless homilies that get spun: “Don’t eat that, you’ll spoil your dinner,” is another classic.  We know, rationally, that many small meals throughout the day are better than a few large ones.  Again, insanity.  Even so this insanity seems to diminish over time.  Nevertheless, it leaves an intelligent child wondering how their folks even avoided the loony bin in the first place.  And what caused them to go round the bend?

Thirty Seven Weeks.  At 37 weeks, something happens inside the crania of parents-to-be.  (I’m reminded of a lyric from They Might Be Giants: “Something unpleasant has spilled on his brain…”) At 37 weeks, the pressure on the brains of expectant parents has passed beyond a threshold where it can be further contained.  This pressure often takes the form of, “Will this child ever arrive?”  Or “what the heck is taking so long?”  Or (speaking directly into the bellybutton at this point): “do you need directions or something?”  There is no more room for the baby and it has begun to smush and deform the brain of the parents.  This leads, of course, to a mild form of brain damage, which in turn positions the would-be mommy and daddy somewhere just left of sanity.  Yes, we have hit that mark, ladies and gentlemen, and we are pleased to announce that we now join our own parents somewhere over the rainbow.

Suddenly, everything my parents ever did makes perfect sense.  There is an eerie logic to all of it.  It also helps explain the great divide between those who find it easy to install car seats, and those who farm the job out to rocket scientists.  The ones who find it easy are the ones who installed the car seat after 37 weeks.

Bill Cosby spoke of kids being the brain damaged ones, but I think it is the other way around.  This is the truly transformative moment, the one which no one ever warns you about, the sudden feather-light tip from sanity into insanity.  I fight it, I really do.  But then again, I suspect everyone does.  I suspect that my folks fought it.  No one wants to be insane.  No one wants to talk in a goofy voice to an infant who can’t understand a word you are saying anyway.  But we have no control over that part of our mind anymore.  It’s gone, and we’re left stammering to a newborn infant things like, “Do-you-have-a-dir-ty-diaper?”

What’s even more remarkable is the fact that when I’ve announce that we have reached the 37 week mark, I have gotten knowing glances from parents, a kind of subtle turn of the lip, gleam in the eye, a secret handshake, a “welcome to the club” nod.  You are one of us now, it says.  And the scary part is that by “us” they don’t mean parents–they mean insane.

All of this I am attempting to take in stride.  In fact, I find it oddly comforting.  I look forward with great enthusiasm to things like changing diapers, and 2 am feedings, and spit-up, and glass-shattering, brain-bending screaming.  All things that a perfectly insane person would look forward to.  The truth is, I don’t mind the insanity at all.

I just wish someone would have warned me about it.

I am finally caught up on the backlog of science magazines!  That includes the June 2009 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, but does not yet include the May 23 NEW SCIENTIST (which I have not yet received). It is my hope that I will not fall this far behind again.

In other news, we spent part of the holiday weekend driving around looking at houses.  We drove past 12 houses on Saturday, and went to 3 open houses on Sunday.  Nothing jumped out at us, but at least we’re beginning to get an idea of the different neighborhoods, and what different prices buy you in each of them.

For some reason, 3 weeks sounds a lot shorter than 4 weeks.  I’ve taken 3 week vacations that have zoomed by in the blink of an eye.  So there’s not much more of a wait before Zachary arrives.  At least we are finally done with everything.  On Sunday, we finished up the last of the stuff we needed to do in preparation of Zachary’s arrival.  We have all of the stuff we need.  We have our bag to the hospital packed.  We met with our lawyer to get wills and a trust set up.  We met with our financial adviser and adjusted our life insurance.  We’ve got the nursery setup, we’ve got the pack-n-play setup.  We’ve got two weeks worth of diapers on hand.

And we are ready.

At 36 weeks, if Zachary were to arrive today, he would be delivered, rather than sent back to cook for a little longer.  I think we’d prefer him to stay put for one more week (babies lungs are fully developed at 37 weeks).  On the other hand, Kelly has reached the point where she is getting increasingly uncomfortable and I think she’d be happy if he arrived any time now.  Thursday is her last day in the office.  She will then be tele-working (from home) until the baby arrives, at which point she will be on “vacation” for 3-4 months.

We have been trying to squeeze in last-minute activities.  We’ve gone to the movies the last two weekends in a row.  On Saturday evening, we had dinner in Shirlington with new friends. On Friday I will attend what is likely my last “happy hour” for some time.   This weekend, we are going to scope out some local neighborhoods in which we are thinking about buying a house.  And we are marking off time by various milestones between now and Zach’s arrival:  Memorial Day weekend (a long weekend, which means a short week following); a couple of birthdays between now and Zach’s arrival.  3 more doctor appointments.  And so on.

I am still eager to see the baby, but I am still finding it extremely difficult to imagine what things will be like once he’s arrived.  Even just holding him is hard to imagine, although I am very excited about it all.  Our informal survey of friends and family who have recently had babies tells us that we should expect an average of 3 hours of sleep every 24 hours for the first couple of weeks.  Then it gradually gets better, moving up to 4 or 5 hours after the first month or so.  We are trying to set our expectations appropriately.  We will have some help.  Kelly’s parents will be in town for a week or so when the baby is first born.  My parents will be in town the last week in June.  And we are looking at getting a cleaning service in twice a month or so, to help keep the house in shape so that we can focus on taking care of the baby.

There are a few other things I’d like to get done before he arrives.  I’d like to make some revisions on a story and get it sent out to ASIMOV’S.  And I’d really like to get a decent way through the next story.  I haven’t done any writing at all in the last several weeks, and I’d like to squeeze some in before Zach arrives.  My reading list also requires updating, and I’d like to get that updated before his arrival.  Finally, I’m still about 5 issues behind in the science magazines (although I’m making progress).  Maybe I can get caught up there too (so that when I fall behind again, it won’t be quite as far behind).

I am looking forward to seeing Zach again at our doctor’s appointment on Friday.  We got some good pictures last time.

See you in a week!

Just a quick note to anyone has spoken with us in the past nine months or so:

We apologize for all of the baby talk.  It seems it is just about the only thing we can talk about.  We very quickly gained the remarkable ability to turn any topic of conversation back to the pending arrival of our baby; or the baby classes we have taken; or the morning sickness experienced; or the baby gadgets we have purchased; or the physiological changes thereto appertaining.   It seems that the whole experience has given us a one-track-mind.  We want you all to know that we recognize this, but seem to be at a loss to do anything to control it.  So while we will likely continue to prattle on about baby this and baby that, we apologize for our repetitiveness, our singlemindedness, and what must certainly be our mawish glee.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Twenty-nine days and counting…

We grow up learning the “simple truths” of pregnancy, in much the same way we start out by learning the simple truths of math. I grade school, as far as you know, 5 – 10 = illegal. In junior high school, the square root of -1 is illegal. These are simple truths. With pregnancy, it’s the same. We learn that it takes nine months for a baby to be born. Nine months. It really isn’t until you become pregnant that you discover that nine months is a simple truth, and it isn’t until you have nearly reached the nine month mark that you realize how frustrating that simple truth can be. In reality, it’s closer to 10 months, and nine months is a simple average. For one thing, the length of gestation is based on the date of the mother’s last period. For another, months have a variable number of days, and all but one of them has at least 2 days more than 4 weeks. This can add weeks to a pregnancy, as we have discovered. At 35 weeks, we are one week shy of “nine months”. That is, if you assume every month has only 28 days.

In physics, we learn that nothing can travel faster than light. The speed of light, C, is the maximum achievable speed in the universe, representing nearly 300,000 kilometers/second. A biproduct of this, and of general relativity is something known as “time dilation”. This is often illustrated in the “twins paradox”. If one twin stays on earth, and another climbs aboard a spaceship traveling at nearly the speed of light, time slows down for the sibling on the spaceship. While many years might pass for the sibling back on Earth, hours or days pass for the sibling on board the spacecraft. And while we don’t yet have a spacecraft that moves fast enough to see this effect in action, there is a similar process at work in pregnancy. Take a pregnant woman (and her spouse), and some random acquaintance. During the pregnancy, time moves at it’s normal rate for the random acquaintance, but time slows down for the pregnant woman and her spouse in inverse proportion to the distance to the finish line. At 3 months, time has slowed to 1/3 the normal rate. At nine months, it has slowed to 1/9 the normal rate. For every minute that passes for the random acquaintance, nine minutes pass for the pregnant couple.

Trust me, I can vouch for this effect–another one of which no one ever tells you about before you are pregnant.

Kelly managed to get the “nursery” set up over the weekend and it looks great. (At some point, I will have to post some pictures.) We had a doctor appointment on Friday and everything is looking good. Our next doctor appointment is on May 22 and at that point, we see the doctor every week until the baby is born. We noticed that over the course of this last week, Zach shifted his position a number of times, moving from his usual spot on Kelly’s right side, over to the left, and then back. It reminds me vaguely of how a cat that has been laying on your lap, who suddenly stands, walks in a completed circle, and then plops down again.

We are both eager for Zach’s arrival.  Kelly, I think, has been trying to bribe him with goodies if he comes a little earlier.  We’ll see how that goes.

Funny comment from today’s OB visit. After getting a good look (via ultrasound) of the baby’s brain, our doctor snapped off two pictures of it which she handed to Kelly.

“Here’s a picture of your baby’s perfect brain,” she said, “Keep it, so that when he’s thirteen, you can prove to him that he once had one.”

How can you not love a doctor with that sense of humor?

Reposted from an Apex Magazine news item this morning:

This morning, it came to our attention that Jamie Todd Rubin’s story “The Last Science Fiction Writer” (April Apex Magazine) shared the same title as Allen Steele’s “The Last Science Fiction Writer.” This had been causing some confusion, especially since Allen Steele had released a nice collection of his short stories using that same title.

For this reason, Jamie Todd Rubin has retitled his story to “Hindsight, in Neon.”

We apologize to our readers, Allen Steele, and Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press for any confusion and inconvenience this might have caused.

Today is the 34 week-mark in Kelly’s pregnancy and that means there are only 5 weeks left before our baby’s arrival.  (Kelly’s c-section is scheduled at 39 weeks, which is a common practice, and that’s why there are only 5 weeks left and not 6 weeks.)  It seems like these last 5 week-markers are good times to reflect on the idea that we will soon be parents, and to update you all on what we are doing to prepare for this.

At this point, we have just about everything that we need to bring the baby home.  We’ve got a crib (which was beta-tested this past weekend by our niece, Sadie).  We have a glider (and one that does not have a crack in it–finally!)  We have a beautifully painted bookshelf (courtesy of Kelly’s parents) on which to put all of the books we have received.  We’ve got a top-of-the-line car seat.  We’ve got baby clothes galore.  We’ve got a breast pump, bed sets, swaddling blankets, toys, stuffed animals, diapers, a changing table, strollers, bottles, and bibs.  There are still some things that we have to pick up, but there are not critical to have.  I still need to install the car seat in the car, but there is time for that yet.  We have completed our childbirth classes, our baby care class, our c-section class, and this past Sunday, we had a tour of our hospital.  We are on two daycare waiting lists.  We have even chosen our pediatrician.  We have submitted our leave plans with our employers.

There are still a few significant things that we plan on doing before the baby arrives.  We need to install the car seat, and once we do, we will drive over to the local police station and have it inspected to make sure we’ve done it correctly.  Next week, we are enrolled in an infant CPR and pediatric first aid class.  Late next week, we are meeting with our lawyer to get our estate planning setup and finalized.  With a baby on the way, that suddenly seems much more important.  We are also meeting with our financial advisor next week, who will tell us how we have to adjust our life insurance, how much to save for college, how much of a house we can afford (because as the family grows, they will need a place to grow into).  There are also a few things that we still would like to pick up before the baby arrives (a baby monitor, for instance, and perhaps some more diapers).

I think we are both beginning to mentally prepare for his arrival at this point.  Everyone in the world has told us in rather dramatic terms, that our lives will change forever after he arrives.  It seems to me that our lives changed forever the moment we could detect signs of his life.  We are expecting to get virtually no sleep.  We are planning on living on the main floor of the townhouse for a while, until Kelly can safely negotiate the stairs after the c-section.  We are well-verses in the frustrations of breast-feeding.  Trouble in these areas will come as no surprise to us, although we will be pleasantly surprised if these things turn out to be easier than we expect.  We are trying to plan ahead.  We have received an abundance of good advice from family and friends and we are trying to use that to our advantage.  We know that we have to prioritize–cleaning the house won’t be as important as changing a diaper.  We are looking at getting some help around the house to tide us over so that we don’t have to worry about this.  (And of course, Kelly’s parents and my parents will be around to help out in the very early stages.)

Physically, Kelly is showing the entire cadre of signs of 8-1/2 months of carrying a bay.  She waddles when she walks.  Her back bothers her.  She sleeps within a remarkable pillow fortress, which calls to mind the height of baroque architecture.  She had her first Braxton-Hicks contractions on Monday.  Yesterday, I could feel the baby just below the surface of her belly.  His feet pushed against my hand with a surprising degree of force.  He has been moving with sometimes violent force, but talking to him seems to calm him down a bit.  (On the other hand, ice cream seems to excite him, so we already know he’s a smart kid.)  I am very conscious of the signs I am supposed to be looking out for.  We know what the plan is for the baby’s arrival, but we are also aware that plans sometimes fall apart and that we have to be ready to go with the flow.  I think we are prepared as we can be at this point, and I can say for myself that I am not nervous, but rather anxious for the time to go by and eager to see the little guy.

So that tells you on how we have prepared.  But how to do I feel about all of this?

That is more difficult to describe.  In my mind, I’ve always imagines myself as a kind of kid living in a world where I am surrounded primarily by adults.  I don’t know why I think of myself in this way, but is the way I have always thought of myself.  Perhaps it’s because I hold a job in which I do things that were a lot of fun for me to do when I was a kid (program computers).  After all, as the saying goes, do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.  Regardless, when I think that I am 37 years old, I experience a kind of cognitive dissonance:  on the one hand 37 is still fairly young; on the other hand, I don’t see myself as 37, I see myself as ageless, which is the same way I have always seen myself.  And since the bulk of my life was spent at ages far younger than 37, I still feel in many ways, like a kid.

I find myself fascinated by the day before and the day after.  With a scheduled c-section, it was suggested that we spend the day before the c-section relaxing, going out to eat, taking in a movie, getting a good night’s sleep.  There is something surreal in that.  It is so typical of the last 37 years, and yet the very next day, things change in some fundamental way that I am not yet capable of understanding.  Or let me put it another way.  For 37 years, I have done a whole bunch of things: learned to read, played baseball, played with all kinds of games and toys, gotten bumped and bruised, laughed (and sometimes suffered) through 16 years of schooling, worked at various jobs, been in various relationships, make people proud and made lots of mistakes.  And now, I am about to do it all over again though someone else’s eyes.  Seems kind of remarkable when you think of it that way.  It’s an opportunity to experience my first plane ride all over again, my first time to Disney World, the first time I skinned my knee or got stung by a bee, the first time I realized the Earth was hurtling around the sun, the first time I read a science fiction book, all of it.  And really, it’s a kind of two-for-one, since Zachary will be experiencing it all for the first time, too.  I have never heard a completely adequate description of why parents take such pride in their progeny, but I suspect it has something to do with this.

I used to worry if I would make a good parent.  It was a legitimate worry.  How does one know until one tries?  But I have had enough people tell me what a great dad I will be that I have allowed my cheerful self-appreciation to accept their opinions as fact.  I do feel like I will be a great dad.  Not a flawless one by any means, but it’s not something I worry about any more.  (Although I must admit, I think it might take me a while to get used to holding the baby.  When Sadie was here, I held her, and I never felt as though she were comfortable in my arms, and vice versa–and I don’t mean “comfortable” in the abstract sense, but the literal, physical sense.)  I think it will be interesting to look back on these blog entries (and on my diary) in years to come and see if I laugh at my naivete.  In the meantime, I just plan on enjoying this.

See you next week.

At some point, every science fiction writer gets asked, “Where do you get your ideas?”  I got asked the question this past weekend and I thought I’d answer it here.  This is a question that has been answered and blogged about by writers, perhaps more often than any other.  But it is also different for each writer.  What works for me, may not work for others, but it may give some insight for other new writers, like myself, and therefore prove helpful.  So, where do I get my ideas?

The very general answer is: anywhere.  I think this is true for most writers.  As a writer, and in particular, a science fiction or fantasy writer, we look for ideas in everything we see and do.  I find that my mind is always on the lookout for ideas, even when this might prove inconvenient, as when your wife is asking you to do some chore, or you are in a meeting with your coworkers.  Someone will say something, and that will trigger a chain of thought that usually begins, “I wonder what would happen if…?”  Many of these ideas are fleeting and a large number of them are cast away.  But some of them stick in my mind, sometimes for a very long time, and it is those ideas, the ones that feel most compelling, that tend to make their way into my stories.  So, just as Isaac Asimov once said, I think and think and think and think and that’s how I get many of my ideas.

Thinking is good, but for me, at least, there has to be some raw material that feeds the thinking process.  I get this raw material from a number of places, but perhaps most frequently from these four:  (1) the news; (2) science fiction stories; (3) science magazines, (4) flashes or images

Often time I will watch the news (or back when I lived in L.A., listen to the news on the radio) and hear a story that piques my curiosity in some way that starts the thinking process and gets me wondering, “what would happen if…?”  The germ for the idea of my first published story, “When I Kissed the Learned Astronomer,” came about in this way.  I was driving into work listening to the news on the radio and the Osgood File came on.  In this particular episode, Charles Osgood recited Walt Whitman’s poem, “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer”.  I’d never heard the poem before, but I loved it.  While the poem is about a romance with the stars, my mind jumped to a romance with an astronomer, and a small alteration to the title of the poem gave me a title for the story.

New writers trying to break into the science fiction field often feel that their ideas have to be completely original, but ask any seasoned science fiction professional and they will tell you that original ideas are almost unheard of.  New spins on old ideas, however, can be very useful.  And so in my reading of science fiction stories, I occasionally get an idea that is based on something I read.  Sometimes, it challenges the notions in the story; other times, it extends them.  Perhaps just about every professional writer has attempted to write a story in defense or opposition of Tom Godwin’s famous story, “The Cold Equations”.  I wrote a story of my own in reaction to Godwin’s, one called, “Wake Me When We Get There” which I used to illustrate the phases of loss in a person doomed aboard a malfunctioning spacecraft.

More often than not, these day, I get my raw material from the science magazines that I read.  I have subscribed to SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN for close to 15 years now.  And I’ve been a subscriber to NEW SCIENTIST for almost a year.  SCIAM is monthly, while NEW SCIENTIST is weekly, making it hard to keep up sometimes (the photo above shows my current backlog of science magazines, that I am diligently working my way through).  I read these magazines cover-to-cover, letters and all.  Not only am I educating myself on all areas of science and technology, but I find a wealth of story ideas within the pages.  Still, you have to be able to identify the real nuggets.  I try to find one good story idea in each issue of a magazine.  Often times there are two or three useful ideas–ideas that can help to better explain a technology that I use in a story–but that don’t form the basis of the story itself.  But one good idea per magazine means roughly 64 good idea each year.

With 64 good ideas each year, am I producing 64 stories each year?  Of course not.  For one thing, I work fairly slowly at this stage of the game.  While I wish I were as prolific as Isaac Asimov, I’m not.  In the past I’ve been lucky to produce two or three stories each year.  This year I’m aiming for 10-12.  Having a lot of ideas to choose from is helpful to me, however, in several ways.

First, I can’t write a story based on one good idea.  I have found that my best stories require the merging of at least two good ideas.  In “Learned Astronomer” I had the idea for the title, and the romance with an astronomer, but I needed something more.  A few years earlier, I’d read an article in ANALOG about how one would go about finding a starship.  Many s.f. ideas focus on “first contact” with aliens.  Using the science of the article as a basis, I wondered, “what would happen if we discovered a starship going from star A to star B?”  Clearly the ship would be so far away, it wouldn’t be aware of us.  Furthermore, we don’t yet have the technology to talk to it.  Finally, at a distance of hundreds of light years, what we are seeing now took place hundreds of years ago.  There would be nothing we could do, but we would know someone else was out there.  I merged this idea with the romance with the astronomer and the two ideas formed the basis of “When I Kissed the Learned Astronomer”.

Second, some ideas take a long time to develop.  I might have a list of 50 or 60 ideas, and I might be eager to work on one or two of them.  But I sometimes struggle, and usually that tells me that I’m either not yet ready to write the story, or I don’t yet have the ability I need to properly tell the story.  It is, therefore, good to have other ideas to turn to.  This year, at least, it has helped me keep writing, and avoid getting stuck on any one story or idea.

Last, but not least, I occasionally get ideas from an image I see either in the real world or in my mind.  The idea for my second published story, “The Last Science Fiction Writer“, came from something I saw in a Baker’s Square restaurant in North Hollywood.  There was a sad old man in a wrinkled, periwinkle suit, sitting all alone, scribbling all over his napkins in microscopic print.  That was the germ for the narrator of my story.

So, where do you get your crazy ideas?

I found out today that my recent story, “Hindsight, in Neon” (Apex Magazine, April 2009) will be included in the anthology Descended From Darkness. This is a collection of stories that have appeared in Apex Magazine. The book is slated for an early December release. It marks the first time that a story of mine has been picked up for an anthology. The full table of contents is here. I’ll have more information as we get closer to the release date.