This Is All Your Fault

An Open Letter to My Very Inconvenient Child

Dear Maven

This is your father. I’m writing this because I want you to know — in no uncertain terms — how much of an inconvenience you have been for your mother and me.

You should’ve been born by now. You should’ve been born months ago. There are whole universes out there where everything went as planned, where the sequence of events that led up to your birth were straightforward and uncomplicated. You could’ve been living in a single family home instead of a one bedroom apartment — if you hadn’t been quite so inconvenient.

In the first universe, I took a picture of the pregnancy test. You appeared so suddenly, so easily — as simple as downloading a fertility app — it was hard to believe it was all really happening. The effortlessness of the situation gave it the semblance of a miracle. It seemed like something that needed to be captured on film. It warranted photographic evidence.

In the time that it took to take that picture, an entire universe unfolded before my eyes — one where your arrival was quick and painless, you were born in the winter, and I became a father without hardly trying at all.

But you were gone in a few days.