After three miscarriages, Jim and Pam Halpert had resigned themselves to a childless life.  The subject of children had become strictly verboten in the Halpert home, and Pam shuffled around in a dull, depressed state for three months before she realized she was pregnant again—this time without even trying.  She was disconnected from the idea of a successful pregnancy that it took her a full week to let Jim in on the secret.

When his wife gave birth to a healthy baby girl, the only emotion Jim was capable of was a vague sense of perplexity.  He stood with his hands fisted in his pockets in the doorway of the birthing suite, watching Pam nurse their daughter, and he was just confused.  In later years, he would be embarrassed that his first emotion wasn’t the all encompassing love that a father should feel for a child.  Instead, he narrowed his eyes and wondered when the hospital was going to realize that they made a big mistake.  There was no way they were going to let them leave with that tiny little girl.   

While Pam checked, rechecked, and checked again that the baby was safely harnessed to the backseat, Jim sat gripping the steering wheel with a white-knuckled terror he had never felt before. Before pulling away from the curb, he studied every blind spot imaginable in a way that he had not done since his driver's exam nearly twenty years prior.

“I’m a father.”  If he had been driving more than fifteen miles an hour when the thought finally struck him, he might have swerved off the road.  

 “Are you okay?" Pam asked, sitting sideways in the passenger seat so that she never broke eye contact with the car seat.  "Huh." The half sigh, half grunt was Jim’s only acknowledgment of the birth of his daughter, other than the face splitting, ear to ear grin that never seemed to go away. Jim was known for a lot of things in his life. He still held the record for most points scored in a season during his high school basketball years. He was the top salesman at Dunder Mifflin six quarters running. One thing he would never be remembered for was his way with words.  

Naming the newborn proved to be a more daunting task than that first drive home from the hospital.  They tried out many combinations and variations of important family members.  Marian (after Jim’s grandmother) didn’t seem to stick, and that left Pam’s grandmother, Elizabeth Catherine.  Jim would have rather assigned his child a numeric identification than name her for the rude, caustic woman who laughed when fellow residents in her care facility fell down. Pam did not hesitate in agreeing with Jim’s assessment. After Elizabeth Catherine’s reaction to her pregnancy—a snide comment about Pam looking fatter than normal—Pam remembered exactly why she didn’t often visit her grandmother when she was a child.   

Without any other viable relatives to dedicate their child's name to, they were forced to become creative. Pam dug out baby-name books and child-rearing manuals for inspiration.  In the end, however, they named the girl after an unremarkable news anchor. While watching the local news one evening, the baby began to wail—a screeching, wracking sob that the new parents would find endearing for exactly a week—the very moment the anchor tossed her cue to the newsroom.  

"Avery," Jim blurted. Pam emerged from the bedroom, cradling the baby in the crook of her elbow. "Hmm?”

"Avery,” he repeated.  “What do you think about the name Avery?” 

"Avery?" she repeated skeptically.

"What are our other options?  ‘The Kid’?  ‘The Baby’?  We might think that’s cute now, but I don’t want her getting teased on the playground because of our bad choices.”    

Pam laughed, sat on the couch next to her husband, and rubbed a hand over the crown of the baby's head. The hair was so fine and light, it was nearly transparent, and she found herself running it through her fingers in fascination whenever she could.  Just as nonchalantly and uneventfully as she had been born, the baby was given an identity.  Her nickname was source of a great deal of contention in the Halpert home before they finally agreed to disagree.  Jim called her Ava and Pam called her AJ.  They both called her by her full name – Avery Jane – when their precious little tax deduction was caught trying to chew through an electrical cord—the modus operandi of her terrible twos.

Jim never resented the fact that he didn’t have a son; he wasn't a chauvinist by any means. In her adult years, Avery would often describe her father as being more of a progressive feminist than her mother. Pam taught her all the skills that would make her an excellent housewife someday. From her earliest years, Avery knew to sort her laundry by color and to check her pants pockets before putting anything into the washing machine. Jim, meanwhile, taught her all the necessary skills to become Lackawanna County’s first Nobel Prize winning Olympian. He taught her the finer points of a jump shot and he brushed up on his math skills, just so he was prepared to help her with the inevitable homework questions. Avery learned to appreciate her mother's quiet dignity over a recipe for lemon meringue pie and was taught to respect the complexities of business while keeping her father company at his office. (She always thought it was strange that she was never allowed to visit her father at work unless his boss was out for the day.)  She learned to pick her battles with her mother during her teenage years, because even when Avery was positive that she was right, Pam always seemed to come out on top. 

Every once in a while, Pam would become concerned that Jim was pushing Avery too hard, and Jim would say that Pam coddled the girl too much. Every time they were about to come to blows over the pitfalls of the other's parenting style, Avery would march in and announce that they had no choice but to listen.  She was nearly eighteen years old, she’d say, and it was time for her parents to come to terms with her being an independent person.  Then she’d stomp out of the house, slam the screen door behind her, and return moments later—another dramatic exit ruined by forgetting the keys to the car.  

Whatever their differences in opinion on parenting, Pam and Jim did nothing if not raise a successful daughter.  Field hockey, basketball, softball, Future Business Leaders of America, Students Against Destructive Decisions, Student Council, Yearbook Club, National Honor Society, Varsity Club. You name it, Avery Halpert was involved in it, and if Avery Halpert was involved in it, chances were good that she also held an elected position.  

Moving their daughter into her dormitory was a surreal experience for her parents.  Avery packed as much as she could into a slightly used Honda, her high school graduation present.  Whatever didn’t fit was stuffed into the back of Pam’s small SUV for the long drive from Pennsylvania to North Carolina.  Pam made the best of things, helping to hang curtains and posters with the idea of making the cinderblock cave a little more welcoming.  Avery bounced up and down the stairs, unloading their vehicles with her typical boundless energy and Jim sat on the edge of her bed and counted the distance—in hours, in miles, in states—that would be between him and his daughter by the end of the day.  When Avery and her new roommate headed off for the first of many orientation activities, Jim and Pam climbed into the SUV and began their drive home.  Jim found himself constantly checking the rearview mirror and looking for his daughter’s car.  He couldn’t quite seem to remember that Avery wasn’t following him anymore.      

The first thought that Jim and Pam had when Avery announced she was bringing home her new boyfriend, Harrison Baughes, it took three hours before Jim burst out laughing.  “His name is Harry Baughes!” he exclaimed, doubled over with laughter while Pam rolled her eyes.  When a shiny black SUV pulled into the driveway, Jim peeked through the blinds and watched the young man cross to the passenger side and open the car door for his daughter. The young man was as neat as pin, his light brown hair trimmed so neatly that it looked like each individual strand had been measured for continuity. If the boy was willing to put that much effort into impressing his new girlfriend's parents, he might not be so bad, Jim thought. But if he was that immaculate all the time, the kid would officially be creepy, and Jim was prepared to drive him off with a flaming torch.  

Jim was prepared to hate him based on his ridiculous name alone, but Harrison was exactly the kind of guy a father would want his daughter to bring home. He was polite, well spoken, intelligent, and obviously enamored with Avery.  He was the grandson of Robert Thames, the discount mattress outlet magnate with stores across the country. Jim could vaguely remember a cheesy commercial he'd seen in the late nineties.  He debated what that commercial said about the grandson, letting his mind wander while Harrison charmed Pam with stories about his trip to the Italy the previous summer.  

Jim blinked into focus and realized that his wife and daughter where in the kitchen fooling around with whatever desserts Pam had concocted. "Mr. Halpert,” Harrison began in a voice dripping with nerves.  “I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes privately."

For one horrifying moment, Jim was convinced that he was having a heart attack. The vice-like grip on his chest loosed enough for him to suck in an uneven breath. "No," he said with great confidence, despite the sweat breaking out on his brow. "Absolutely not." 

"What?" Harrison asked, his lips moving and his eyes darting back and forth. 

"Are you going to ask for my daughter's hand in marriage?"

"Yes…I was—"

"Then I don’t need to talk to you in private," Jim interrupted as he reached for the bottle of wine that sat in the middle of the table. "She's not even nineteen years old, and you want to get married? What are you, twenty-one?"

"Twenty-two," Harrison corrected petulantly. 

"Oh, well, in that case…” Jim toasted the young man with his wine glass and a sarcastic smile.  "The answer is still no."

"Daddy." The single word was uttered like an expletive and had Jim wincing. With his wine glass still at his lips, he shifted and saw Avery in the doorway. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes watery, and her hands on her hips. "How dare you?"

"Ava," Jim said in the same voice he’d used to teach her important lessons as a toddler.  "You're eighteen years old, you're not even an eighth of the way through college, and you want to get married?"

"I'm eighteen years old, which means if I want to get married, I will,” she retorted. “I love Harrison, and he loves me. Why are you being so horrible about this?" 

"Why did he ask my permission if you both didn't want to hear my answer?"

"It's a formality.”  The identical withering looks from father and daughter made Harrison painfully aware that he was better off keeping his mouth shut. 

"Well, since it's a formality, and you're going to do what you want because you're eighteen," Jim mumbled. "You can do whatever the hell you want. But that doesn’t mean you're going to get my permission to do it. Or pay for it, for Christ’s sake."  

"Fine," Avery snapped, turning to give her mother a chaste hug. "I'm sorry, Mom," she said. "Harrison, let's go."

"AJ, don't," Pam begged. "It's just a shock; your father doesn’t mean it. Stay, we'll talk this out."

Avery paused, glancing at her father.  “Oh, he means it,” she said.  She grabbed Harrison’s wrist and dragged him towards the back door.      

He could see his little girl, that little nameless blob that was swaddled in a cream-colored blanket right after she was born, marching out the door. He knew how he could stop her—by apologizing, by telling her it was okay. He still couldn't bring himself to say that he was okay with his baby—his little Ava—getting married, even if it would make her stay.  "I'll remind you," he shouted. "That since you're eighteen and so independent all of a sudden, you can send me a forwarding address so I can send you your tuition bill for next month."

"I don't need your fucking money!" It was the first time he'd ever heard her swear, and for some reason the profanity broke his heart more than her running off with some mattress salesman.

They didn’t hear from her for two and half weeks, and in those two and a half weeks, the only time Pam would speak to Jim was to remind him that if they never heard from their daughter again, it would be entirely his fault.  He nearly dropped the phone in relief when he finally heard his daughter’s voice. She was pleasant—distant, but pleasant—and asked for her mother at the first sign of an awkward pause. After Pam hung up, she sat down on the edge of the couch and faced him. "They're getting married next month. February seventeenth, at his family’s place in the mountains. We can come, only if we promise not to be critical."

"Is she pregnant?" Jim asked wearily, rubbing his hands over his face.

Pam was taken aback. "I don't know," she said slowly. "Why do you say that?"

"I don't understand why Ava would suddenly decide that she had to get married as soon as possible, with or without our support. If she's not pregnant, she's on drugs, because that's sure as hell not our Ava."

On a frostbitten day in February, Jim walked Avery down the aisle, grinding his teeth every step of the way. The flowing dress was cut in a way that Jim knew that he'd have a grandchild by the end of the year, even if Avery hadn't admitted it yet. The only way he managed to smile in the pictures was to entertain vivid fantasies about choking the life out of his new son-in-law with his own ridiculous bow tie.  He kept his mouth shut, smiled for pictures, danced at the reception, and toasted the couple at the reception.  The only thing he’d learned over the months of tension was that proving a point was not worth losing his daughter.   

Jim and Pam didn’t think about it often—that bleak, miserable time before Avery had been born—but when they did, they both fervently prayed that their daughter would never experience the same heartbreak of losing a child.  In its way, it was a blessing that Avery waited until the last possible moment to confirm her pregnancy to her parents.  It meant a few less days of putting on a happy face and pretending they weren’t terrified for their daughter.  It meant less sleepless nights, lying in the dark and waiting for the phone call that would make their terror all too real.   

When Jim was sitting down to his lunch at noon on a Thursday afternoon, he got another phone call entirely. Pam gripped the door handle as if her life depended on it as Jim broke dozens of traffic laws in their trip to the hospital. They expected Avery to be in the midst of labor, but were instead told by a jovial doctor that she gave birth in record time, a bouncing baby boy with all the necessary equipment.  

Jim found Harrison standing at the observation window to the nursery, his hands buried deep in his pockets. He'd never seen the young man anything less than impeccably dressed and groomed, but now he was in a wrinkled gray tee shirt and jeans that looked to be decades old. “Everything okay?” Jim asked, even though he recognized the perplexed look on the young man’s face very well.   

"What? Oh, yeah," he replied, making an effort to look like he had his wits about him. "Yeah, I'm good."

"Does he have a name yet?

"Yeah, he does," Harrison said, finally registering an expression other than confusion.  He gave Jim a sideways glance.  "James William Baughes.  From day one, she was set on naming our baby after you."

Jim turned and looked at his son-in-law, not as that no good son of a bitch that got his little girl pregnant, but as a person, as an equal.  Suddenly, he saw so much of himself in the boy. In that moment, he was thirty-six years old, on top of the world, seeing his child for the first time.  Just as quickly, he was fifty-six.  He was old.  His hair was thinning and white, his knees didn't bend right when it rained, and he spent more money on blood pressure medicine than on groceries in a month’s time. It wasn’t his baby being rocked by a nurse, and Harrison was not his son.   

Harrison and Avery's marriage wouldn't last the year, but Jim didn’t know that then. He didn’t know that he'd suffer a minor heart attack—a "cardiac event" his doctor liked to call it—the afternoon Avery showed up on their doorstep, baby in tow, with black eye and bruised wrists.  He didn’t yet know that he would spend the first month of his retirement finding the nastiest lawyer money could buy to make sure that Harrison never saw his son without the supervision of state social workers.  Jim didn't yet know that at sixty-five years old, he would take little James to his first baseball game, where he would buy the boy a tee shirt he would wear until it was torn to shreds and a foam finger that would become one of his most treasured possessions. He didn’t yet know that he would pass down his ancient baseball mitt and doze off while his daughter pitched baseballs to her son in the backyard.  He didn’t know that he wouldn’t wake up from that nap, a massive stroke while he slept taking his life at the age of seventy-one.  And he didn’t know that when James would say he missed his dad, everyone would know that he wouldn’t be referring to Harrison.   

Because if Jim had known all of that when he was standing next to his son-in-law in front of the nursery window, he certainly wouldn’t have offered Harrison a hand and asked “Well, son, how does it feel to be a father?”