Day 1

I guess it's fitting that I'm starting this on a Wednesday as I was born on a Wednesday. The children's rhyme says that Wednesday's child is full of woe. I'm sure there are lots of people out there born on hump day that claim this isn't true, that it's prejudice against mid-week births. But I read it and tend to say, yeah, it's not far off. Even on my happiest of days, and there are many, there's an underlying melancholy beneath it all. My youngest son, Connor, was born on a Wednesday. He seems happy, though he's a loner and prefers to play by himself in the backyard, imagining some other world, talking to himself in hushed tones. He also has a brutal temper that appears from nothing in a split second. It's like looking in a mirror.

I was thinking about another children's rhyme the other day when I saw four crows in the street in front of our house. The one about counting blackbirds to see what their meaning is: one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a story that's never been told. Seven seems the most romantic, but you never see seven crows together. Mostly it's one. I had two Irish friends in grad school, Shane and Niamh, and one night at a party, standing under a covered porch in a downpour, they told me that in Ireland when you see a crow you always start looking for another one so that it becomes something other than sorrow. When we saw the crows in our street, my oldest son, Cormac, asked what four birds meant, so I went through the rhyme and said, four for a boy. He replied, "It's me. I'm the boy." I said, "Well, it could be Connor, or even me. I'm a boy." But he said calm and confident, "No dad. It's me." He was born on a Tuesday. Full of grace.