[Entry #1] | Revelation
Nov 11, 2024 | The Brooke Report
*Field notes from November 5th, 2024. 1:38 PM PST*
My Daughter Needs Me
That was my first thought, a laser beam from my mind directed at you, darling. It’s not that the nurses were unprofessional or careless. Quite the opposite, in fact. The whole team in the room during the entire proceeding was flawless and necessary to aid in the opening of the portal that sourced a pathway for you out into the world and onto the table in which I now found you. Alive. Alive! My daughter. I have a daughter who is alive and it came out of my wife, and now that moving, ethereal body swimming around my bed had broken through the fourth wall and was now screaming, right there in front of me.
Like I said, a fish out of water. But you were breathing, because you were screaming, and so you were alive, and hence a miracle. Yes, the nurses were in charge, but you weren’t their miracle. You were the highlight of the day's shift for them, their happy distraction on a day that most people desperately needed one. So, to them, you were convenient. Not a miracle.
But what could I do? I could hardly function and put one thought in front of another. IT WAS ALL HAPPENING. In that moment, layered onto the chaos of actual material concern, my brain was caught in another first: a prisoner’s dilemma between tending to your mom and micromanaging the nurses dealing with you, darling.
Their professional care was important and integral to the overall end result, but because it was professional, it felt detached. The last thing you needed was detached care; you needed someone to stop the fall through the fourth dimension. So, in the end, I moved forward without a plan, but with a feeling that needed to be communicated to you, urgently.
You Are Safe, Angel. Daddy Is Here
I took two deep breaths, assumed an eye-level squat to meet your gaze, and extended my right hand over your chest with as much love and softness as I could muster in that moment. I had heard that babies can remember voices and sensations from the womb, and I never wished for something to be true more than this.
You’re Safe Here. Do You Remember This?
Maybe you did, or maybe you just needed something to distract you. But as I ever so gently laid my hand on your entire body, your screaming and hyperventilating quelled. You looked into my eyes, and I saw *you* for the first time. My whole life changed in that moment.
We stayed like that, eye-to-eye, for long enough for the nurses to clean you up and whisk you back onto your mom’s chest. I was 1/1, at least 0 for 0 with a walk. No damage incurred. I got this.
So that’s what this is about: what you have given me.
It doesn’t matter if you see this ever, if you don’t want to, or maybe you will. I did not get to know my dad as a person. I only knew him as dad. This was good in a few ways, but has left me mostly empty as I move through life. Who was this person that made me the way I am? I hope to color in that context for you, so you will know me. And should you ever see this, I hope this serves to only further extend what you already know. Because if there is any shadow of a doubt, than I have failed. Epically.
The world you find yourself in, the one here with me and your mom, will tell you all the ways that, no, love is conditional. All things are predicated on production, on value, on worth. Here is written testimony that I hope flies forever in the face of that awful lie.
I Knew You Wouldn’t Know Me
As I write this, you probably still don’t. But you gave me confidence that I could—and I will, Brooke.
Love, in its essence, is obvious and it is unmoving. Unchanging. Like Truth. As love proves to be the ground you run on, let these thoughts be the soil that packs it in. Let these words and the ones to follow be all the testimony you
should ever need to take on this deeply confusing but beautiful and sublime existence. (AS YOU READ THIS YOU ARE ON A ROCK, hurtling through infinity, so yes, darling, you can do anything.
So this is the story, the evolving story, about how you made me whole. I love you, Brooke. This is the Brooke Report.