The Buick We Brought Our Boy Home In

The Water Breaks

Mason decided to come on Friday, right on schedule. That surprised the whole family, because nothing in our line has ever once been on time.

Jen woke me at four in the morning. She said it was happening, calm as you please, already timing it on her phone.

I had the bag by the door for a week. I had the Buick warmed up in three minutes flat.

I scraped the frost off the windshield while it idled, my breath hanging white in the yard light. My hands were shaking and it was not the cold.

The hospital is forty minutes off, in the county seat. I drove careful, both hands on the wheel.

Jen breathed beside me with the seat reclined a little. The heater blew good and steady the whole way there.

Twice she grabbed the door handle and bore down. Twice I told her we were close.

Both times that big V6 just hummed along like it had done this exact drive before. Like it knew the way.

“Your grandpa’s car is a good car,” she said, between one pain and the next. Even then she almost laughed when she said it.

We pulled up to the doors and a volunteer came out with a wheelchair. Jen waved her off and walked in on her own two feet, gripping my arm, stopping once in the lobby to breathe through a hard one.

I parked the Buick careful in a far spot where nobody could door-ding it, which I know is a foolish thing to think about at a time like that. I thought about it anyway. It was Grandpa’s car. I was going to bring it back to him without a mark.

Then it was a long day of ice chips and the monitor beeping and me being no use to anybody. Jen did all of it. I just held her leg and told her she was the strongest person I ever met, and I meant it more every hour.

We made it. Fifteen hours later, at 7:52 in the evening, our son came into the world.

Mason. Seven pounds, one ounce. A full head of dark hair and a set of lungs on him like a county fair hog caller.

I cut the cord with my hands still shaking. The nurse laid him on Jen’s chest.

The two of them looked at each other, mother and son, the first look. I stood there useless and overflowing and had to grab the bed rail.

For the first time I understood what my grandpa meant. About keeping the people you love out of the weather.

I stepped into the hall and called Grandpa Roy. It was late, but I knew he would be sitting right by the phone, waiting.

“It’s a boy,” I told him. “Mason. He’s perfect, Grandpa. Jen’s perfect.”

There was a long quiet on the line. I could hear him breathing.

Then my grandfather, eighty-one years old, cleared his throat and said, “I’ll be ready in the morning. You come pick me up in my car.”