After Charlie Was Born or The Owls, Part One

Charlie was born on a Thursday at 9:58pm in a hospital in Oakland, California. He was born in the presence of my husband and my mother and several other hospital types who don't matter to this story at all.

As soon as he was born (such a passive description of a very active process), all of us felt many emotions. It was, as I would come to describe it later on, a sacred experience for me. This perfect child was beautiful and he was mine. And all that had been done to get him into this world had been done by me, no matter what anyone else might claim. So as soon as he was born, and they handed him to me, I did a couple of things. I began to say "my baby, my baby" and I began to weep. Next, I reached for the neck of my hospital gown and pulled it off of me so that I could put my baby right against the warm skin of my chest.

The other people that matter(ed) in the room may have said some things, I don't remember. Exclaiming at how flawless he was, how calm and wise-looking. Husband guy was right there with me, hugging me and smiling and perhaps even weeping himself. But as you might expect, my mother began to take pictures of this new baby, of all of us. I'm glad she did. Those are moments I always want to remember.

I would tell more about what happened right then in that hospital room, but that's not what this story is about. This story is about those photos my mother took.

After we left the hospital, my mother stayed with us and our new baby for several days and then went back home to Boise. Almost as soon as she was home, she sent an email to all of my siblings and a couple of my aunts with several pictures attached. Most of the pictures were of me and Charlie, but oddly enough--and I still shake my head at the immensity of this coincidence--also included were a couple of pictures of the owls she had found nesting under the highest eaves of her home.

But there was a problem with some of the pictures. No, it's not what you're thinking. Her email attachment came through just fine to everyone on the list. The problem had to do with the content of some of the pictures. As I said, as soon as Charlie was born, I placed him on the bare skin of my chest. But when my mom took and later looked at the pictures, she was so focused on the exquisite cuteness of the infant that she failed to notice my 100% naked breast floating pinkly in the near-background.

And so it was that all of my siblings and my aunts received several photos of me looking a bit more exposed than I would normally like to be in a photograph.

She also sent the email with the photos to me. And I, 7 to 10 days after the birth of my first child, looked at them and immediately noticed her oversight. It was true, though. The baby in the foreground was much more important to the pictures. Maybe, like my mother, some of the email's recipients wouldn't even notice that fact that these were blatant boob shots. I talked about it with Jeremy. I was a little upset. We downplayed it. I called my mother. She apologized for her mistake. I tried to put it out of my mind.

Then my oldest sister called. Had I seen the emails? Yeah, I had seen mom's and was a little frustrated that she had done that. Ok, right, she said, Had I seen the email from my brother?

No. I hadn't. I'd better look at it, she told me. And she made some other bracing comment, unsure about how I would respond but knowing it might not be pretty.

Turns out my brother had looked at this whole bizarre batch of emailed photos and had replied to us all with his clever and somewhat inevitable response:

"Nice hooters."

And that, my friends, is when it all came tumbling down.