Emmett Berman, of House Hart, First of his name

Jamie's Playlist

As parents, we strive to remember all of the funny individual moments that our children create. Alas, it's impossible. In the moment something may seem so visceral as to leave a permanent imprint on the brain, but we have no shot. There are too many of them. It's one of the great things about photos, blogs, tumblrs, etc, they at least provide some triggers for recollection.

Still, I do have one memory that has stayed with me since Jamie's birth, and I promised myself I'd write this post before our second child is born. Seeing as we are likely within 24 hours of that occurrence, I figure my time has run out to get this on the (web)page.

Jamie was in the hospital for 8 days when he was born. I say this not to be melodramatic. Though we were certainly shook up by this early curveball, we know that many have experienced much worse. Still, the delayed gratification of taking him home led to immense anticipation.

And that is why I know our drive home from Piedmont Hospital took roughly 17 minutes and 25 seconds. I know this because we heard four songs on the radio during that drive, and they've remained with me to this day.

Now I'm not a religious man, and I don't necessarily believe that everything happens for a reason. Still, I've always thought it would be fun to go back and revisit those songs, and see if there are any metaphorical meanings I can extrapolate.

Song 1: Paradise, Coldplay

How cliched, right? Like right out of some holiday chick flick (presumably starring Riggins from Friday Night Lights and one of the Jessicas, Biel or Alba -- or both!), it figures a sappy Coldplay song would be the first one out of the gate.  'Tis no lie though. Right as I keyed the ignition to begin our trek home, the first violin strings of "Paradise" began. It seems too overt to try for some sort of metaphorical angle here -- the surface meaning will do.

This will always be Jamie's song to me. Any time I hear it it transports me back to Thanksgiving Day 2011. It is a fitting song, as Coldplay's music has had a running thread throughout Hilary's and my relationship. Their song "Yellow" was very nearly our choice for our first dance at our wedding*, and "Swallowed In the Sea" was on the mix CD** I made to play in the car when we moved Hilary to Atlanta from DC.

*As if to prove how our memories fade, Hilary and I have been trying to remember if we used Yellow for some other purpose during our wedding, and neither of us can remember. Maybe it was when we were walking down the aisle? Or father-daughter dance? No idea now. 

** Hey, remember those?

Like most Coldplay songs, "Paradise" is fairly uncomplicated and seemingly superficial, yet it still has a way to affect me emotionally. Sue me, I like Coldplay.

Song 2: The Man Who Sold The World, Nirvana

This song comes from one of my favorite albums of all time, Nirvana's MTV Unplugged (for my money, the best performance of that entire program's history), and it's a cover of a David Bowie song. The song itself is somewhat inscrutable to me (a quick google search suggests it deals with multiple personalities), but if I could take any lesson away from this to pass along to Jamie, it'd be that talent can be both a blessing and a curse. I wasn't that huge a Nirvana fan when they were around, but even still Kurt Cobain is probably the defining musician of my childhood. He was a genius, but a tortured one. I certainly hope that Jamie (and his baby brother) find things they are good at, things they can share with the world. But sometimes those things can consume us, and ultimately, I believe it's better to be happy than to be famous. 

Song 3: Eminence Front, The Who

I love The Who the way most people I know love them, which is to say I think they rock, but I really only know the songs off their Greatest Hits album or from Tommy. And even though I almost exclusively listen to rock radio***, until this drive home I had never heard of this song, from their 1982 album It's Hard.

*** Well, not entirely true. Nowadays I almost exclusively listen to podcasts, and in high school I almost exclusively listened to the Jackson rap stations. Damn I was hip.

Why 97.1 The River chose to play this song that day (ever?) is a mystery to me, but the darndest thing about it is ever since I've heard this song abundantly, and not just on the radio -- in intro music to televised sporting events, at restaurants; it's crazy.

The takeaway with this song is that it's never too late to learn something new, and by that I mean I just learned that the term for this sort of pattern (where once you see a new word or concept you see it repeatedly) is the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, which sounds like the most bad-ass name for something I've ever heard. I wonder if it's too late to convince Hilary of a name change? Baader-Meinhof Hart has a nice ring to it.

Song 4: Closer To Fine, Indigo Girls

I'll be damned if this isn't just the most apt song for this playlist. I have a long, long history with this song. Every girl at summer camp knew this song backwards and forwards and would lean into it like they were on stage in a goddamn Broadway musical. In fact, arguably the most famous camp alum**** once sang this in the camp talent show.

**** And girlfriend of mine for a full twen-tee four ho-urs.

At my older sister's rehearsal dinner, my younger sister and I sang a song set to this tune about how we always thought she was a lesbian.*****

***** Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The late, great Mitch Hedberg had a hilarious joke about how songs have different meanings to people depending on the circumstances surrounding when they heard it. For most of my life, I have hated this song. But now, because it was playing as we turned onto our street to begin our journey into parenthood, literally becoming closer to fine with every tire rotation, I can't help but have a positive association with it. And Jamie, though I love you, I'll always blame you for that.

Due Date vs. Snowpocalyse Two: Who Wins?

Harts, in happier cold-weather climes

Today is February 12th. Hilary's due date with Baby Boy #2 is the 15th. Currently we are at home due to an ice storm that overnight is supposed to transition seamlessly into a snowstorm. The roads are impassable. These are the facts of the case, and they are undisputed.

It's a very strange world we occupy.* Life begins and ends on this planet at every waking moment, which means that no matter what is happening, good or bad, someone is being brought into the world in the midst of it. But you never think it's going to happen to you, right?

* I mean this in a micro sense, but certainly the same could be said on a macro scale as well.

We are coming to the end of Day 2 of "Snowpocalypse Two: The Snowpocalypsing" in Atlanta, and tomorrow looks to be more of the same, which is to say we'll be home another day with no reasonable thought of leaving house. And Hilary could go at any minute.

Which means, we are really, really hoping we hit that due date.

In the immediate lead up to Jamie's birth, I remember the overwhelming anxiety of knowing that my world could be turned upside down at any minute. Minutes felt like hours, hours like days, and days like longer-seeming days.

I wasn't ready, and therefore I didn't want it to happen. But that was all existential. This time? This is legit. This is an actual crisis, or at least a potential crisis if the wheels get put in motion.

Hilary has developed some sciatica-like symptoms in the late stages of her pregnancy. Every time she moves, she winces in pain. To the untrained eye, these bear a striking resemblance to the onset of contractions. Each time it happens, I nearly need a change of underwear.

An aside.

Often times in sports, a player will make a mistake in a game of huge magnitude that in a losing effort ends up being the thing they are remembered for the rest of their lives. Chris Webber's phantom timeout. Buckner's booted grounder. For the old timers, Merkle's Boner. But sometimes that mistake doesn't preclude victory, and it becomes just another footnote of history.**

** The best example I can come up with from recent vintage? Ahmad Bradshaw's excuse-me touchdown from the Giants-Patriots Super Bowl a couple years back. 

That's kind of the situation we find ourselves in right now. Our cousins, who live a mile or so from the hospital we are scheduled to deliver at, offered to host us for the duration of the storm. We declined, mostly because this entire weather situation seems like a gross overreaction to what happened here a couple weeks ago, but also because Jamie was born 5 days late (and even that was after an induction), and I've convinced myself it'll go down the same way this time as well. Or because we are morons.

This will either make for a charming anecdote we can share making small talk at parties, or it will be a truly life-altering experience. What will we do if Hilary goes into labor and we can't drive our car on the road? This could legitimately happen. Even as I sit here typing this thought, thinking there is no way this could happen, THIS COULD SERIOUSLY HAPPEN. For fuck's sake, I could be writing this very sentence and Hilary could scream out in agony and I'll have no choice but to start furiously googling how to deliver a baby at home.***

***Though I am sure someone has made a fairly easy to follow DIY video on YouTube.

I've mentioned before on this blog that my friends have a saying that everything always works out for Micah, and I am sure that line of thinking led to us bypassing the safe play of staying closer to the hospital just in case. And again, even though it would be PERFECTLY FUCKING RATIONAL for this baby to be born in the next 24 hours, I still pretty much believe that everything will turn out just fine. Which grand scheme it will, no matter if the baby arrives via the careful hands of an obstetrician or via catcher's mitt.

I guess the most important thing out of all of this is that Hilary and I made the choice to stay home together. Because if this was just my idea that I talked her into, then tomorrow we'd be introducing Itoldyouso Hart to the world.

I kid of course, Hilary is not that mean-spirited or vindictive, two traits we hope to avoid passing along to our soon-to-be child. Instead we want him to be honest, to be selfless, and to be compassionate.

But more than anything, right now, we want him to be patient.