JUST A BLUR

Dear Spike:

Back when I was new to newspaper reporting, one of my jobs was to cover the dirt track stock car races that were held each Saturday night outside the small Oregon town where I worked.

The center of the track always felt to me like the eye of a hurricane. The cars — so big, so fast, so loud — blurred past in streaks of yellows, blues, whites, reds. Over the public address system, a smokey-voiced announcer would introduce the drivers and call the action. “And here comes the Number Thirty-Three car out of turn two... he’s gonna bank it high past Larry Johnson in the Number Two... let’s hear some noise, folks....” All around the inside oval, oil-tarred mechanics cranked wrenches with shiny black hands, sucking on unlit cigarette nubs, yelling for tires and hoses and clasps and clamps.

I’d walk into the oval on a Saturday evening, just as the sun was coming down. I’d walk out three, four, five hours later, my head pounding from the noise, dust and exhaust, glad that — at my weekly newspaper — I’d have several days to make sense of what I’d seen.

Even today, much of what I remember from those nights is just a blur. That’s OK with me. There’s little from those races I’d mourn were it erased from my memory altogether. There are more important things...

Tomorrow morning you’ll be a week old. And in so many ways, I feel I’ve stepped into another hurricane, this one a blur of doctors and nurses and phlebotomists; of family and friends and neighbors; of feeding you at 3 a.m. and changing you at 3:15 and rocking you at 3:30 and putting you down at 3:45 and picking you up to feed you again at 4; of marveling at your strength; of fretting at your delicateness; of watching for your belly to raise with each breath; of firsts or this and firsts of that; of love and hope and happiness beyond anything I’ve ever felt.

Oh, what a beautiful blur. And all of it — every tear, every breath, every cry — I want to remember. I do not want to lose. There is nothing more important.

And so I find myself lamenting the limitations of the human memory. Already, I wonder why I can’t remember the names and faces of all of your doctors and nurses. I wonder why I can’t remember whether I first heard you cry in the delivery room or in the room I followed you to next. What time was it when they brought you in to see your mother? What outfit did we dress you in when we first arrived home?

Funny thing about details, you don’t always know which ones are most significant until time has passed. And, of course, by that time it is often too late — they speed by like a stock car in a blur of noise, dust and exhaust.

And so I sit here and watch you as you watch the world. I count your hiccups, I memorize your breaths, I study your eyes. And I try — so very desperately — not to fall asleep.

Oh, what a beuatiful blur. Oh, what a hurricane. Oh, don't let me forget.

Love,
dad