Baby Mine
companion piece to "Surprised by Joy"
vanhunks
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek Voyager, Janeway and Chakotay.
BABY MINE
Once, a very, very long time ago, I read about a cow that had difficulty in calving. The farmer and a young boy spent the night tending to the distressed cow. In the end, the farmer assisted the cow by "fetching" the equally distressed calf, burrowing his arm with the greatest of care until, with a sudden whoosh, the cow expelled her heifer.
The old man looked at the young boy who witnessed the birthing process and said, with absolute conviction, "It is at times like these, that I gain the greatest respect for a woman…"
I have never forgotten those words and they have become the holy writ on which I have lived. Sometimes when I look at Kathryn, I have to blink and blink and perhaps, even pinch myself that I should be so lucky, so honoured that she is my wife now. It made waiting, however pained and hopeless, worth it many times over. And when she announced the coming of our child, I thought that my life became complete, became even more intensely meaningful.
Kathryn gave birth and never more have I admired, loved, been in awe of her power, her grace and her strength more than in those moments our child was born. Hard it was, filling us with fear that threatened to overwhelm our expectations, the eagerness to see our baby born. It was not easy and I had wept with Kathryn many times during the night, wept at the fear of losing something too precious.
Now my eyes are glued to a face, a tiny face, flushed in the clouds of sleep that spread the red into her cheeks. I want to die of the pleasure it gives me just looking at Joy.
"She looks like you, Chakotay, love…"
Kathryn's words drift into my meandering thoughts. I had still been too stunned, too completely amazed and, I admit, staggering with unmitigated joy at seeing our tiny baby lying on Kathryn's bosom. Mother and child, and every second I gazed at them, my heart had pounded in my throat, like a thousand buffalo thundering across a plain. Even as I imagined that spectacle, I had become almost faint with the magnificence of what I was seeing before me and what I had been imagining - something rare, and something wondrous.
And I was there, part creator of a miracle that lay before me in silence so hallowed, I was afraid to breathe.
"She - she looks like me?"
My voice I knew, croaked and stammered, my eyes I knew, were never dry, my hands I knew, never stopped trembling. I felt oddly displaced and strangely there, paying homage to my wife and newborn daughter.
"Oh, yes…" Kathryn had whispered, her eyes already drooping, her voice slurring, yet her arms protectively, lovingly holding our baby close.
"But she - she's only just…"
And Kathryn, in such a Kathryn way, opened her eyes, looked at Joy, a finger tracing the baby's soft as down hair. Then her gaze fixed on me.
"She is you, Chakotay…"
Now I can see Joy's eyes, dark like mine and her hair black as night. A silly thought strikes me. Did Kathryn order Joy to look like me? Did she? What I know is that her words had filled me with pride that day, such pride I had never before experienced.
Our baby sleeps while her mother is on duty. She is about to wake up. Perhaps I willed her into wakefulness, being so totally engrossed in just looking at our little miracle at three months old. Kathryn had tended to her before going on duty, promising to look in on us later. Come on, sweetie, wake up for Daddy… My eyes still feel moist, my voice still breaks as I try to sing to her a lullaby, my hands still tremble when I caress her impossibly soft cheeks, my heart still threatens to stop beating at the wonder of her. I am still awed that she is mine…
Her eyes open slowly, as if she had woken from a dream and simply continued it whilst awake. And unhurried movement that was not surprised, agitated, distressed, or even hungry. They fixed unerringly on me. My hands leave their trembling behind the moment I lift Joy with the utmost care from her crib and hold her up for a few heart-rending seconds. My eyes want to break their dams and overflow again. I am hardly aware of the doors to our quarters opening and closing, or of the footsteps that mark time and find their way to us, of the hand that rests gently on my shoulder..
"Sweetie," I croon softly, feeling again the breathlessness that threatens to overwhelm me as I look at Joy. "This is going to be the beginning of a great relationship. Understand?"
Joy stares at me, and in her eyes lie recognition.
Then I think of Kathryn's words, o holy writ on which I've built my happiness:
"She is you, Chakotay, love…"
***
END