Welcome into the world, Baby Iggy.

11:08pm, 4 January 2007. I am hanging out with friends, watching them play pool in a thickening, fuzzy cloud of both smoke and my consciousness. It's alright, though. I won't mind the smoke until I wash it out of my hair in the morning. My cell phone rings and I see it's Richie. It hits me just as I bring the phone to my ear. "It's a girl." I can hear his smile. My best friend from high school is a father! [Joyful exclamations; lots of expletives.] Mostly everything was okay, he tells me, though Syreeta had trouble with some of the drugs (I think; am I remembering that correctly?). The baby had fluid in her lungs, but that was sucked out and yeah, she is just fine. At seven pounds, eight ounces, she's perfect, really. Happy Birthday, Irene Margaret Combs-Cannaday; "Iggy". I am thinking about how brave Syreeta is. And every woman who's ever become a mother. A frontier I most certainly know nothing about and have no idea if I ever will. We continued reveling in each other's company, more pool, more beer. Then, in a move so overwhelmingly Charlottesville it made me want to puke, somebody at West Main decided to play Under the Table and Dreaming. I called Richie back to leave a more obviously drunken message. DMB is what brought Richie and I together, really. I was listening to UtTaD on a bus ride to Busch Gardens our freshman year of high school, I was a newish student still getting to know everyone. He was friends with my pal Julia and asked what I was listening to. The next thing I knew I was playing guitar on a corner of the Downtown Market and Richie was crooning like Dave. Better, really; a little too pristine with his 16-year-old, just eased into post-puberty voice. I would sometimes add Carter's harmonies, but I was shy, mostly inaudible. I remember the Saturday we made $40. I never knew I could be touched so incredibly deeply by life. By something being born. I mean, this happens every day. I don't want to sound like a babbling idiot, but I am really surprised at how much this affected me emotionally. Two beers in, I blamed it on the booze last night, but now I know it was perfectly legitimate. I still feel it today, and I'm very, very glad.