Enter Hans

Hans Hansen Harris. Weds. January 11, 2017. 8:07 am. 8 lbs 5 oz. 20”.

You sound so impressive what with your eight plus pounds and all, but really you’re just a little scrap of a thing. The pictures don’t properly showcase how little of you there actually is; and it’s quite a wonder that your strong, noble spirit could fit at all into this tiny body with its bowed and meatless legs and extra thin, long feet and toes. Jesse can’t stop telling people how small you really are under your swaddled up blankets; and all the siblings keep exclaiming over the tiny notch in the top of your left ear, and your minute fingers with such new bones that they can bend in startling ways. And yet, something about you is big. So big that you haven’t been set down once since coming home. None of us want to not be holding you. I find myself anxious to get you back to myself when anyone else has you – so much so that I actually get eager for sleepless nighttime simply because it is so quiet and still, and I have you all to myself. I usually make sure there is just enough light on that I can watch your new eyes opened wide and aware, as I whisper little comforting bits of words and rub my cheek against you. When panic over all this newness tried hard to assail me that first night, instead, my mind kept hearing – as if someone was whispering it comfortingly to me – “It’s worth every possible inconvenience. Every possible inconvenience will be worth it.” And, in turn, I would nuzzle your head and whisper it to you and sense again some small bit of the miracle that we did it – we brought ourselves together again – until we’d trail off to sleep with whispers of “ . . . worth it”.