In Which I Am Uncled

The thing about a small family is, it's small. And sometimes it gets smaller before it gets larger. Since the birth of my baby sister Amanda in 1986, there have been five funerals--and zero babies born.

Until last Saturday, when the youngest of us, Amanda herself, started to right the scales.

When the news came that she was pregnant, Amanda moved in with our parents in Dallas while the father, a chef of Cajun extraction named Patrick Couvillon, went into basic training as a Coast Guard reservist. From time to time I would get a text with a new ultrasound image--and being who I am, I would send a text back to her, asking why she was sending me pictures of sweet potatoes.

Now Amanda, she works with children with disabilities, but she didn't get her final certification till she was already pregnant, so there was no point looking for a job in her field right away. Which explains how she ended up playing the part of a dancing pregnant elf.

(Oh how I wish I had a picture to insert here. I've been begging for one. She won't give it to me.)

It was Christmastime, y'see, and a nearby hotel had a program that they described as helping kids bake holiday cookies and whatnot. A bit of outreach for their guests with children. What the hotel did not tell her was that she'd be wearing a costume. Or that there would be some dancing involved. With fake plastic elf ears. All set to a minute-long song that she would have to listen to, and dance to, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then again. Till she became a dancing, pregnant, murderous elf.

But eventually that ended, and her fellow elves threw her a party, and then she was done, in those last weeks before the baby came, growing larger and, it need hardly be said, grumpier with each passing day. Patrick finished basic training and joined her in Dallas, which helped a lot. (He now has a job as a chef at a nearby Hyatt--where they do not make him wear elf ears.) And me, the uncle-to-be, I started looking for dates when I could come out and visit. Ideally, a date as close to the birth as possible.

Because when my brother and sister were born, I wasn't there. In both cases I was supposed to be there, I had plane tickets from Boston that would have gotten me to Miami in time for both due dates--but they both showed up early, and I had to hear about their births second-hand, from a few thousand miles away. "Not this time!" I declared, and started examining the calendar. The due date was right at the end of January. Since the kids were both early, I settled on the weekend before the end of the month: January 21-23. I knew the unlikelihood of actually pegging the birth date, the baby could still be born before I could get there, or he would come afterward so that my entire visit would consist of marveling at how gigantic my sister was and why was she being so grumpy?

(Okay, I suppose I may be overstating her grumpiness a little. But I'm telling the story and I'll tell it how I like, so there.)

My dad talked me out of that particular weekend. I would almost certainly miss the birth, there was nothing I could actually do to help during a visit, it would be much smarter and more sensible to wait a couple extra weeks till all the excitement was over, and I could be certain of meeting my brand-new baby nephew. Reluctantly, I agreed and pushed the date back.

Six a.m. Saturday morning, the 22nd of January. My sister calls. She's at the hospital. And instead of being there to help, as I might've been, I was locked in Los Angeles, hearing it all from very far away. Again.

But maybe it was for the best, after all. Sitting in a hospital waiting room wouldn't really have been an improvement on sitting in my living room--I heard all the news almost as soon as there was any news, and by not being there I was spared the terror of that stretch at the end, when the baby was in distress and Amanda was in distress and the baby came out looking distinctly blue. By the time I heard any of that, Amanda was feeling fine and the baby was already starting to pink up nicely. Cellphone photos were promptly sent to me, and I just as promptly posted them on Facebook, so that little Hunter Cole Couvillon was announced to the world, with photos and details, very shortly after he was born.

There were some days in the NICU, but mother and child left the hospital together a few days ago, and have settled into their new life at home. We did a family Skype yesterday morning where I was able to see the baby move and squawk for the first time, and I was able to tell him "I'm your Uncle Robert. Everything I say is wise and good." (Amanda had a few words to say about that, but I'm telling the story here and they're not important.)

And so I am uncled, for the very first time in my life. The doctors say all visitors should wait for six weeks, which seems intolerably long. ("He'll be in college before I can get out there," I whined yesterday.) But it's okay, there will be a baptism in Louisiana (Cajun country!) in March and it looks like I'll wait till then. With Skype and cellphone photos and all the other marvelous doodads of the information age, I'll still get to participate a little, even from all the way out here.

And since no such tale is complete without a baby picture, here you go: Momma 'Manda and baby Hunter, doing his best impression of an evil scientist (in a dinosaur costume, no less):