THE HEAT LAMP
MARCH 14, 2007
approximately 1315 hrs in Community Memorial Hospital delivery room #5, 2nd Floor
(Some fifteen minutes after birth!)

Julia Emerson scored a "9" out of "10" on her post-birth Apgar test, but how she did scream like a banshee! "Oh, the horror! The outrage!" she seemed to be saying. "Can you believe what they are doing to me, daddy?" she seemed to scream at the top of her lungs with an infant wail.

It goes without saying that I was most proud of both her test score and her fighting spirit in decrying her brisk handing by the nurses.

"My mother groaned, my father wept,
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud."
William Blake
Infant Sorrow (img)