Prologue

It’s 7 pm in terminal Four in San Francisco.

The plane I had boarded three hours ago has been offloaded after an hour on the ground. Unspecified engine trouble. Don’t leave the boarding area—it may be solved at any time.

Standing behind me is a tattooed young couple dandling their nine-month-old baby. Next to them is a handsome older guy, big and fit, in a tweed jacket and khakis.

I know, because I looked at them when I started eavesdropping on their conversation, which started out normally—“your baby is so cute, how old?”

“Nine months but she’s already acting like she’s three.”

“I have three kids; my baby is 20, it is hard to believe.”

The young couple is polite, I move to the side so I can see them. Their faces wrinkle slightly: they can’t believe anyone’s baby is 20. They’re 20. Their parents never went through this, this baby love, this memorization of every move, this fascination with the minutia of toes and babble and poop. This prosperous tweed jacket guy has nothing to do with them.

“I have three kids,” he says again. “It passes so quickly.”

Again they nod unbelievingly. It isn’t passing quickly. They aren’t getting any sleep. The baby can’t be left for five minutes. The minutes in the day are each counted by cries or new discoveries, or precious naps.

“I traveled a lot when my kids were growing up. It was hard to be there for them, but I did my best.”

They nod, and the baby reaches out for the big guy. “Okay if I hold her?” he asks.

It is the father who answers, but only after looking at his wife. “Sure. But she might be stinky.”

The big guy takes her. “I have three kids,” he says for the third time. “Two boys and a girl. The girls are harder, for sure. This one will be harder. Although, the boys need attention too.”

Everyone nods. The couple can’t imagine having a boy, either. The whole world is this girl. A boy…that’s another reality.

“And you have to be there exactly when they need you. Like when I was traveling and my son was starting his first day of school when he needed to wear a coat and tie. He called me at the hotel. ‘Dad, I don’t know how to tie the tie,’ he said. We had done everything else—gotten the jacket, the shoes, ironed the shirt. We had forgotten to tie the tie. So I stood in the hotel bathroom with the phone, looking in the mirror, and giving him instructions—put the tie under the collar, make one side longer than the other, this side goes over that, and that over this. We walk through the whole thing, me with the phone on the counter, yelling in, and then he says ‘but the wrong side is longer’. So I tell him we have to start all over again.”

He’s quiet a second, then hands back the baby. “It goes really fast,” he says. “Enjoy it while you can.”

We don’t board for another two hours, but the conversation has run its course.