Legacy

They laid my wife down on the paper covering and tucked a kind of bib into her pants before they unzipped them and pulled them partway down. The mood lighting was set and the room was warm. The woman with the sonogram wand was gabby and was talking faster than a NASCAR mile. She was sucking on a peppermint. "Move, baby, move", she said. Through the curtain of the sepia static, a little body appeared. A tail-like spine, bird-wing arms, a ginormous head, a little ball of moving slush that was the heart, like a tiny ember of the sun. "So you guys sure you want to know what baby is?" the woman said through the peppermint. Yep, we said, we want to know. "It's a boy. There's his little member", she said. The fetus moves his arms his hands as if he was shielding his face from the tabloid paparazzi. The fetus can move his arms at 4 months old? He has a mind of his own already? He was a mouse, a bird, with a heart going a mile a minute, and I felt the legacy beginning. I couldn't wait to hold that little man in my arms. Seeing him starting his life, without really much input from us besides nutrients and a sperm and an egg and a lot of exhaustion and cramps on the part of my wife-it didn't matter. He is already living his future. He's my legacy!

CHURCH