Dear Chloe, part III

I would like to tell you what I saw when I stepped back a little and watched what was happening in your home. You were about six hours old. Your Mother had given you your first bath (one begins life kind of a mess, and she wanted you to look your best) and your head had reformed itself into the right shape, so you were looking very pretty and charming and demure. But your parents, reclining together on their big bed, were like a king and a queen, for their presence was one of great dignity and a deep, quiet happiness, very much unlike what one sees anywhere else in the world today. They were exhausted and disheveled, and your Mother was so spent she could not yet master her legs, but they were like two great souls who had fought a tremendous battle together side by side, emerging bloody and torn, collapsed in exhaustion, but together, and victorious. I watched your mother's beautiful face as she rested her head on your Father's shoulder, and I watched him holding you, his first day as a Father; I saw the strength and the tenderness in his hold, and knew that I was watching a man who had been a rock in a violent storm - battered, perhaps, but unfailing. I knew you were in very good hands.