Dying in the Post-War World

23

My son was born just before midnight, on September 27, 1947.

We named him Nathan Samuel Heller, Jr.

His mother — exhausted after twelve hours of labor, face slick with sweat, hair matted down — never looked more beautiful to me. And I never saw her look happier.

“He’s so small,” she said. “Why did he take so long making his entrance?”

“He’s small but he’s stubborn. Like his mother.”

“He’s got your nose. He’s got your mouth. He’s gorgeous. You want to hold him, Nate?”

“Sure.”

I took the little bundle, and looked at the sweet small face and experienced, for the first and only time before or since, love at first sight.

“I’m Daddy,” I told the groggy little fellow. He made saliva bubbles. I touched his tiny nose. Examined his tiny hand — the miniature palm, the perfect little fingers. How could something so miraculous happen in such an awful world?

I gave him back to his mother and she put him to her breast and he began to suckle. A few minutes on the planet, and he was getting tit already. Life wasn’t going to get much better.

I sat there and watched them and waves of joy and sadness alternated over me. It was mostly joy, but I couldn’t keep from thinking that a hopeful mother had once held a tiny child named JoAnn in her arms, minutes after delivery; that another mother had held little Jerry Lapps in her gentle grasp. And Caroline Williams and Margaret Johnson were once babes in their mother’s arms. One presumes even Otto Bergstrum and James Watson and, Christ, George Morello were sweet infants in their sweet mothers’ arms, once upon a time.

I promised myself that my son would have it better than me. He wouldn’t have to have it so goddamn rough; the depression was ancient history, and the war to end all wars was over. He’d want for nothing. Food, clothing, shelter, education, they were his birthright.

That’s what we’d fought for, all of us. To give our kids what we never had. To give them a better, safer place to live in. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

For that one night, settled into a hard hospital chair, in the glow of my brand-new little family, I allowed myself to believe that that hope was not a vain one. That anything was possible in this glorious post-war world.