On Dead Birds and Live Babies

God help us, I'm a father now.

Death came to us in a dull thud, usually around noon.

It sounded like a knock at the front window the first few times. Loud but not jarring enough that you’d look up from your bologna sandwich for more than a second or two. But then one day you see a robin or a swallow lying prostrate in the garden and put two and two together.

Unsuspecting bird plus large window equals death.

“So that’s what that sound is,” I’d say, staring down at the animal. Sometimes their wings would stay spread as if still in flight, like some sort of avian Jesus who died for the sins of bird.

After I turned eight, it became my chore to dispose of the bodies. That my mom would have chosen me was no small honour. I was a child who once pretended to have an imaginary friend so he would seem more interesting. My older brother Vincent was more like my mom than I ever could be; headstrong, a born fighter, good at math. But he couldn’t stand the sight of blood. 

So I got the dead bird assignment.

When the death thud came, I’d get to work — fetching a plastic bag and shovel and walking to the garden to inspect the crash site. Sometimes the birds weren’t dead. On the rarest occasions, I’d give them a nudge only to witness them come back to life and fly away. It felt like I was human Jesus, raising Lazarus from his tomb.

Usually, I wasn’t a bird messiah though. Usually, the birds would just twitch and stare back up at me through dark eyes. No sense in letting them die slowly. The shovel wasn’t just for digging graves.

I took no joy in the work but it taught me how to handle fear; stay calm, kill the part of yourself that wants to run away and move forward one step at a time. 

That was my mother. I once saw her close a wounded dog’s carotid artery with her fingers, pick it up and get it to a vet fast enough to save the poor mutt’s life. People screamed, blood came gushing out of the animal and most veterinary clinics were closed because it was Easter Sunday. Another Jesus metaphor.

I’m a father now.

No amount of bird executions could have prepared me for that. Everything leading up to the moment my child came screaming into the world was crisis management — the trip to the hospital, the contractions, the emergency c-section and the feeling in my heart when our newborn daughter stops breathing. This fear could all be buried in the garden next to the swallows. 

This I had spent my life preparing for.

Once, I nearly blew my hand off with a firework. I remember taking a breath, holding the mangled paw up to my face and counting each finger to make sure it was still attached. I then removed my shirt, wrapped it around the wounded appendage, took a handful of magic mushrooms and returned to the party. 

That was two months ago.

People talk about the first time they hold their child like it’s a moment of distilled ecstasy. Maybe it’s that way for most men but it scared the shit out of me. I can manage a crisis. This child is something that happens in between crises. This is child is a life. And I am, at best, a novice when it comes to living. 

When I looked into baby Wednesday’s cloudy eyes at the St-Jérome hospital that night, I saw the face of every person I’d ever hurt and every person who ever hurt me. I thought of them as babies, as helpless creatures needing only to be swaddled in sheets and nursed at their mother’s breast.

I felt guilt and empathy. I felt each of my sins, every transgression recorded in some ledger in the sky. I wondered how many of these babies were loved and how many had been cast aside when things became difficult.

The fascist-leaning columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté was an infant once. Soft skull and all. Did he ever really know love? Or was it theatre masquerading as love, a performance for the other parents at the park? I don’t like him very much but I do hope he was loved.

I held Wednesday against my bare chest, wondering if the surgeon would soon finish closing Marie-Pier’s wound so she could be returned to us. It seems unfair that a newborn should be without her mother. Maybe I was projecting. There has never been such a great thing in this life as Marie-Pier.

“I’m gonna puke.”

Those were the first words I spoke to her when we met. I had confused the location of our first date and only realized after I was already late. So I ran towards her until my stomach acids splashed their way up my throat. Had she been any less patient, there would be no Wednesday.

That evening, we sat in Adirondack chairs by the Lachine Canal, looking at a mound of garbage as seagulls picked insects off an old engine block. We didn’t know they had drained the canal for spring cleaning. But we stayed there until the sun set and the beer made everything shine just a bit brighter.

It was on our second date that Marie-Pier laid down the law: “I don’t want children and if this is going to be serious, I’d rather wait three years before me move in together.”

She was pregnant seven months later. It wasn’t the missed period that tipped Marie-Pier off. No, it was the supernatural sense of smell she seemed to develop overnight.

“Oh my God, the dog’s vagina reeks!” she said, practically spitting out her coffee. “Do you smell that?”

To this day, I have no idea how she knew what a dog’s vagina smells like. But it was jarring enough for her to buy a home pregnancy test. And then another. And another. And one more for good measure.

We weren’t planning on a baby but we failed to plan against that eventuality as well.

“What do you want to do?” she said.

I tried to read her. For someone whose job is to watch and understand people, I am remarkably bad at it when it comes to my partner. Uncertain and more than a little bit terrified, I told the truth.

“I think I wan’t to kee—”

“Me too.”

Marie-Pier developed preeclampsia late in her pregnancy. 

It’s a condition that affects some women towards the third trimester, one that causes their blood pressure to shoot up, blurs their vision and, in the most extreme cases, results in kidney failure. Left untreated, it could kill the mother and her child. The only cure is to induce labour and hope for the best. 

We were about to sit down to supper last Friday when Marie-Pier said she felt dizzy. She was sweating, her vision blurred and her head was throbbing. So as she recorded her vital signs, I packed our bags for an overnight stay at the hospital.

I was cool headed during that drive there. We listened to Johnny Cash as the hills and pastures of Mohawk territory gave way to the expansive nothingness of suburbia. By the time we reached St-Jérôme, the night sky had been blunted by glowing car dealerships and billboards extolling the virtues of home ownership. On the radio, Cash sang of apocalypse and redemption.

“You know, I’d love it if we stopped for a McFlurry on our way home,” said Marie-Pier, convinced this was a false alarm. 

I didn’t cry when Wednesday was born. 

Perhaps I had gone too far in hardening myself to get through it all. It was objectively beautiful. One moment, we’re in the operating theatre, on the sterile side of a blue curtain erected so we don’t have to watch them saw through muscle and tissue to extract a human from inside Marie-Pier. And then, a moment later, we hear her scream as it overtakes the clanging machines and instrument panels.

She was purple and grumpy when they introduced her to us. Later, after they washed off the baby goo, our eyes met. I’d never seen such a thing.

Once I stood on a fjord at the edge of the Arctic sea. Just a few meters away, the ice beneath my feet gave way to the ocean. A storm raged, causing the great mass of salt water to swell and recede. It wouldn’t have taken more than a shift in the current to crack open the ice and plunge me deep into a lonely grave. They would have never recovered my body. I would belong to the sea.

Have you ever felt so insignificant that it’s blissful and terrifying all at once? That’s what Wednesday felt like. Though at first, it was hard to see past the fear.

When we found ourselves alone in the nursery, a great sadness washed over us. Soon our friend Marie-France took over so I could use the bathroom. I splashed water in my face and hyperventilated.

I didn’t fall in love and I didn’t feel like a new or better person. Was I up to the task? This child didn’t ask to be born into a world on fire but she is my responsibility now. And I supposed she is all of ours. Though, in fairness, I won’t expect you to soothe her when she wakes up screaming in the dead of night.

They returned Marie-Pier to us all sutured up and still reeling from the trauma of it all. And then it started to happen. It was as though my body didn’t allow me to experience the joy of parenthood without her.

My love for Wednesday grows with each soiled diaper, each howl that can only be soothed by a bottle of warm milk or the act of cradling her until her pupils drift toward her forehead and she slips back into a dream.

Once I looked at her and thought of every bad thing I had ever done. It isn’t up to her to redeem me but she shouldn’t have to live with my sins either. So I will atone as best I can and, for now, look to my daughter and see only the possibility for a better tomorrow.

If I’m lucky, she’ll let me teach her how to write with purpose, how to chop wood and the importance of not holding a firework in your bare hands as it shooters phosphorescent light into the sky. 

Love isn’t just tenderness. 

Sometimes love is being there for a burnt hand or a knee scraped against hot pavement. Sometimes love is respecting your baby enough to be honest with her, to tell her the truth even when the truth is complicated and may diminish you in her eyes.

And sometimes love is trusting your child enough to have them bury a dead bird in the garden.

Love,

Chris

***

Oh my God I’m a dad.

So if it’s okay with you I might share pictures of the little scamp from time to time. You can let me know if it’s excessive.

I will be extra busy these next six weeks as Marie-Pier recovers from surgery. She can’t drive or lift anything heavier than the baby so The Rover will be a little less… Rover-y for a while.

That said, I still plan on publishing every week. I’ve never been more determined to make this project work. So, if you can, help me stay the course and maybe tell some friends about this newsletter because Wednesday only poops in the finest diapers. As I’ve said in the past, aside from the 15 per cent we pay Substack, every penny of your dollar goes towards producing new journalism.

Your friend,

Chris