2001-07-14 - 12:06 p.m.

Now. At a medium pace.

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Now I�m running out to the lake. First I�m just jogging along getting the rhythm going in my feet, then I think how great it is that I�m running, and I smile. I smile because I realized just a few hours ago that I�m off tomorrow for the fourth and I�m free. I never feel freer than when I am running, so I start pumping, my legs stretching out longer and longer and I feel that I�m lifting off the ground, looking down over this sea of people gathered along the beach for the city fireworks display, splashing their feet into the water or shooting bottle rockets into the dusky sky.

The smells of July have always been the sweetest. The barbecue smoke, the sulfur scent of used fireworks. It�s the smell of my birthday. My birthday�s not technically till the fifth, but convenience made the fourth My Birthday (Observed).

It�s the first birthday in a while when I haven�t been home, but strangely I�m as happy as I�ve ever been on my birthday. For the first time, I�m not sheepish about having been born.

I remember being happy on my birthday as a child, as happy as I ever was, but it wasn�t a comfortable happiness. I was thrilled to have all these people paying attention to me, telling me I was a great kid, rubbing me on the head and singing to me. With all the smiles and hugs and songs and fireworks displays that entire towns would shoot off over the beach in my honor, I could almost believe that I was special.

But I never thought to myself, Yes, I am a great kid; yes, I am mom�s special little guy. It was more of a Am I really a great kid? Am I mommy�s special little guy? AmI amI? I don�t believe you.

When I was about eight, I would come running up to my mother as she cooked dinner and whisper into her ear incessantly, �Who�s your favorite, mommy? Pleeeease?� I would just want to just sit with her or watch TV, just be safe and quiet, always wanting to linger at home when I should have been out long ago, so she had to shoo me away, go play with the kids outside, get some exercise.

But on my birthday I felt special. Here were all these people gathered here just for me, cooking hamburgers on the grill for me, lighting sparklers and bottle rockets in my honor, and my heart raced as I snuck a peek at the gifts in their shiny wrappers, trying not to look too excited but wishing it were always my special day, that there would always be some strangely-shaped mystery present waiting for me in colorful wrapping. What was inside them I have no idea; they were just things, toys to get bored with, clothes to put on and forget about, things a kid loves one day and forgets the next. The one gift that linger is a song from a flimsy record that sang me a song on my Fisher-Price record player.

�My name is Zoom, and I live on the moon

And I came down to Earth just to sing you this tune!

Hey David! It�s your birthday, today!�

The taste of the cake and ice cream have long since gone, leaving only the vague impression of smiles and hugs, and the thrill of the sun disappearing on a humid summer night.

After the cake and the presents we�d all walk down from my aunt Nancy�s house to the beach, blankets in tow, and set up on the sand. Kevin would run out near the water, or examine some old shell or driftwood. I�d run to catch up with him, but soon he�d be running off to the next thing, and it must be exciting but back there�s mom and Nancy and the rest of the crew, so cozy on the blanket that I want to just sit on the blanket and wait for the fireworks to start. And I�d sit back and mom would tell me about what was happening on this very day not so very long ago in 1976�

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Pat was getting irritable. She sat in the car, waiting for the cars to filter out of the naval base. It had been a long fourth of July; mingling all day between cookout in their wooded hamlet, cooling off with some homemade ice cream at the Keller�s next door, trying to keep an eye on Kevin, who at 18 months was getting to be a handful, and the neighborhood kids who ran tirelessly in the agitated heat. Factor in humidity, in-laws, a baby ready to burst, and, of course, the large chunk of southeastern Connecticut fighting its way out of the navy base parking lot, and Pat just wished the weekend would be over.

The bicentennial fireworks, seen from the lawn of the base, were beautiful, of course. Now they just had to get through this last bit. They joked, as the car inched its way out of the parking lot and down the road home, that if she went into labor now, she�d never get to the hospital. The baby would just have to be born right there on the side of the road. But that wouldn�t happen; the baby wasn�t due for another two weeks.

They didn�t know that inside, the baby was almost done, almost ready to push its way out. Perhaps it could have been born that day, and become a true celebrity, a Bicentennial Baby, an extra-special baby with the kind of birthday that comes around but once in a century � July 4, 1976. But no. It would stay inside for one more day, cozy up here inside the womb where it was quiet and warm, no noisy fireworks in here, and pass up its big chance at fame on the day before it�s born.

Or perhaps it heard the hoopla outside and decided, true to form, that they seemed to be having so much fun and I shouldn't bother them by being born today. Or perhaps it wisely decided it didn't want to share its birthday with "America - Humanity's Crowning Achievement." No sense in being defined from the moment you�re born; much nicer to be sneak in anonymously when the world least expects it.

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The grandparents were on the road back to Massachusetts, and the country was feeling its collective hangover on the Monday holiday of the fifth. Finally, Frank thought, he could get a bit of work done on the house. It was a good visit with Mom and Dad, fireworks, barbecues; even managed a trip to the beach until Pat started feeling a bit off. But it�d be nice to have a patio the next time they come�

But time was precious. Long hours working on submarines at Electric Boat, business trips to California. At home, a son who was just learning to get into everything, another baby on the way, and a home that needed lots of work. But here, here was a day off with nothing to do. While Pat rested on the couch, Frank saw his opportunity to pick up some bricks for the patio.

�Hi.� He smiled, leaning against the wall and looking down at Pat on the couch. �Well, I think I�ll go to the lumber yard.�

Pat was feeling uncomfortable. She had been feeling some contractions, just an involuntary tightening, like a beach ball getting blown up too tight, every once in a while. Nothing to worry about yet, though, still two weeks till the baby�s due. But still�

�I think I�ll come with you,� she said.

All the way to the lumber yard and back again, she timed her contractions. Every 20 minutes or so. And then, sitting in the kitchen, the water broke. It was time. Call the doctor. Get Kevin to the neighbor�s house for the evening. Get to the hospital.

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And then my life as a fetus comes to an end. Pushed by genes, pulled by forceps. I find my voice and scream � I was not prepared for this; I did not mean to grow so big. I find my eyes and open them � these white lights flood my eyes. Eyes to observe; voice to speak.

I am expelled from the womb and then taken away, sequestered into a nursery with my fellow orphans. Anything could be happening, we have no idea, we were inside our wombs so warm and pleasant, together inside, and now we are suddenly alone.

We don�t know if this is the beginning or the end. Information invades our brains. Will it kill us, or make us stronger? This world is so big, and I am lost in a fog. Save my strength; rest. So I close my eyes and sleep.

And then, after an hour of breaking down our resolve, they return us to the point of disconnect. An hour to orbit outside mother, awestruck at its awesome shape, its familiar sound, its just-rightness. I wonder if this is a first hello or a final goodbye. I wonder still.

And so I have stopped being the fetus, the joining of the two separate strands, and begin to be the human being, a new being, in search of another to join. Inside the womb, I was the fulfillment of a destiny, the fulfillment of evolution itself, an answer to the meaning of life. Now I am just another question, unfulfilled.

All my life, I have felt that emptiness, that unfulfillment. People told me I had merit and I could not believe them, could see no reason that I had been brought here after all. They could light off fireworks in my honor and still it made no sense. But now, 25 years later, I have at least posed the question aloud, I have resolved to create my fullness, fulfill myself. The answer is not there but suddenly that is not the point, I can be proud of myself. I can run around and smile and laugh. I have new eyes to see, a new voice to speak, and I am reborn again. I may hang on to the old days for one more day, I may kick and scream as I come out, but it only goes to prove that I�m out, and I�m not going back in.

My whole life is a pushing away and a drawing in, from that first fatal moment, that push from the comforts of the painless womb, thrust by my inescapable growth, thrust out of the home and into the world, thrust across the country by my irrepressible genes, riding that giant escalator that pushes us into the sky, and always looking down to that lost innocence below. But now I am finally looking up.

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