His son, his long anticipated son, had just come into this world! How could he have prepared himself for the intensity of emotion that poured through him as he watched? Oh, he’d known about the mechanics of the process, the stages of labor and such. Beth had seen to that. But no one had told him that sometimes the intensity of Beth’s discomfort would slice through his heart like a storm-powered piece of debris through an unprotected window. His hand still ached from the power of her grip.

His gaze softened, eyes unfocused, as he recalled the beginning of the process. A blizzard was dropping its relentless load of snow outside while they cuddled before the fire. Beth had argued it was the perfect time to start their family. Robin, noticing her wistful looks whenever they passed a family with a baby over the previous months, was not unprepared. They had been married four years now and he supposed it was time to share her with a child. So they had passed that late January afternoon in intimate pleasures, their passion deliciously heightened by the anticipation of a child to come, birth control left languishing in the drawer. During the discomforts of pregnancy he had wondered if the best part of fatherhood was behind him.

But the moment he left Beth’s side as the midwife called him to catch the precious bundle at the moment of his birth, Robin knew the journey had just begun. Filled with awe, he silently counted fingers and toes, marveling at their tiny perfect nails. It was the midwife who answered Beth’s question. “He’s a boy.” Robin had yet to find his voice as his heart overflowed with love for these two precious creatures, wife and son, for whom he was responsible.

Now, a few hours later, his body began to relax. Robin shifted his shoulders and eased against the back of his chair. Through the window behind his writing desk in stark, unshadowed white against the blackness of the sky the sliver of the moon a few days past new grinned its approval. Robin sipped his coffee then stared in amazement as a ring expanded across the surface of his drink, unaware of the tear which had begun the ripple.