Sinatra

I opened the passenger side door for her and just stood there for a moment, staring down at her. The afternoon sun was blinding and the birds chirped loudly inside the Oak tree in front of our house.

I'd catalogue these little details, save them up in my mind and recall this moment whenever I felt a little peeved;  annoyed that my monitor was frozen or that the guy ahead of me on the highway was breaking for no good reason at all.

For the life of me though, I couldn't recall what "annoyed" felt like just then.

I was warm down to my toes.

"You gonna help me out here, Halpert?"

"What? Oh!" I said and bent down quickly as she pushed herself to a standing position and pushed the door shut behind her, I could tell by the soft sound that it made that it wasn't shut all the way but I couldn't be bothered with reaching for it or hitting the little button on my keychain. I only wanted my hands on her.

I scooped her up into my arms.

"I think I could probably walk," she said, but looked at me with those eyes and then let her head fall against my shoulder.

I grinned, feeling a little proud of myself as I started up the path to our house. What a nice day it was. How completely and terribly terrific. Terrible because how could any other day ever compete? Poor June...poor August.

Had the flowers that she'd planted just weeks ago in the flower box been so vibrant just this morning?

Surely they must've been.  The Shasta daisies probably knew we'd be coming back in this sort of mood; the kind of mood that suggested the possible clairvoyance of plant life. The kind of mood that had me humming Frank Sinatra songs and muttering things like, "They just don't play good music anymore," as I'd driven us home from the hospital.

She'd giggled and called me Grandpa and I'd thought, ‘One step closer.'

I didn't own any Sinatra, but I figured tomorrow I'd go out and get some.  It felt like the right time for a little Sinatra.

Gently I sat her down on her feet on the porch because I needed to fish my key out of my pocket. My hand shook. Sort of like the first time I'd let her inside the house with the intention of telling her that it was ours.

It was ours all over again, only in a whole new way.  Two ‘ours' had become three.

Three.

We'd recently replaced the old creaking front door with a new one and the fresh, crisp separation from the jam prepared my ears for the following cocoon of silence.  Nothing but us, a baby, and a bit of that rarified air that Frank sang about. 

We stood together in those two feet of entry way not saying a word. Completely still on the floor I'd tread on through all types of weather.  The dirty old linoleum had held me up in crusted sneakers, too tight dress shoes for the winter formal, and cleats that had gotten me into heaps of trouble.  But never once had I stepped through this door wearing these particular shoes.

I felt her arms slide around me and her face in my chest, her warm breath against my heart.

I thought about keeping the linoleum. Pulling out the square she stood on right this minute and framing it in our baby's room.

Jim Halpert did indeed like cheese.

"This is amazing," she mumbled.

I ran my hands along her spine, my head dropping towards her shoulder.  "Did you think...at all..."

"No, I never even thought about it...just the nurse asked me when my last period was and I couldn't..." She shook her head. "I couldn't remember. It was so weird...but then I thought I'd just been really distracted with the paper company and...but then when she was serious...when she said, let's get a blood test just to be sure...I think a part of me maybe...thought...maybe..."

I was grinning like an idiot as she recounted the moments. Waiting for her to get to the good part...like I hadn't been there to hear it for myself.  The good part...Jesus, I was inside the good part.

The good part was us and him or her.  No, this was the best part.

She grinned back at me and I leaned in to kiss her.  How could I not?

I felt that familiar burning at the backs of my eyes when I pulled away and I pressed the heals of my palms to them, laughing at myself.

She kept smiling up at me.  "We have to move from inside our doorway at some point!"

"No," I said laughing. "I feel like I don't want to move...I barely wanted to drive home!"

She linked her fingers through mine. "You just wanted to stay at the hospital? Forever!"

"I know! It's like...I don't know, I felt like this...this spell would be broken or...I don't know...I don't want to think about anything else other than...this and..." I broke off and my hand suddenly came to rest on her lower abdomen. 

The entire drive home I'd been kind of dying to do it and I hadn't...afraid I'd veer off the road and crash into a tree or something.

She pulled her lips inside her mouth. "I don't think there's anything to feel yet."

"Sure there is," I whispered. "Wow."

"We could just stay here forever," she said quietly and I knew she wanted to stay just inside this bubble we'd created just like I did. "And the baby will just be born right here in our entry way."

"Perfect. It's nice and airy right here...sunlight comes in through the kitchen window..." I reluctantly pulled my hand away and gestured to it.

"Perfect," she said smiling at me.

God that smile. I conjured a thousand different versions of it and pasted it on the small little newborn face in my mind.  "I love your smile."

The words had tumbled forth like a new revelation. Like I'd never thought them before, when clearly I had.

Clearly all my thoughts just felt...new...today.  Like today's the day I'd write a song if I knew how.

Her smile got wider and her eyes filled with the same tears that mine had moments before. She glanced down at her feet. "And to think all I had was a sprained ankle...now I have a baby."

"That hospital is really generous."

She tried pushing up on her toes to kiss me and winced.

I grimaced, "Oooh...sorry..."

She licked her lips and leaned into me. "I want to be somewhere I can touch all of you...." her fingers slid up my T-shirt. This good ol' lucky Scranton t-shirt.  I'd keep it forever.

It was a ridiculously intoxicating kind of high...this moment of ours. This moment just inside the door...just inside the rest of our lives together.

"I guess we'll have to leave this little space then and go somewhere else."

"There's a place upstairs that I like."

I scooped her up in my arms. I knew where that place was.  It had gotten us to this one.