this time without anesthetic or incision, the enormous baby emerging from a passage never before employed. Unlike his brothers, this remarkable creature arrives with script and necktie, ready for public life. While pushing him out, I vividly envision his future and hurry my convalescence to go out and spread dead leaves and shredded paper over our family secrets. This takes weeks. My failure to inspire my other children is redeemed by this bodacious boy, bound for some kind of glory, hard to tell what kind just yet. He has well-defined black eyebrows over eyes that see through all of us, skin a color that defies race, a manner even in infancy that renders class irrelevant. He is every parent's dream child, born with straight teeth and a full head of hair, talking and walking, full of wisdom or what passes for wise, his eyes green as grass, his hair blond and electrifying, a microphone in one hand, a bandage in the other. I bleed, but yet I believe. I name him Adam. What else can I do, on this, the eve of a reborn world?