Opinion: Why Father’s Day always reminds me of my newborn daughter, a permanent marker and an angry nurse

Opinion by Ed Manning

(CNN) — At age 40, I had been a first-time father for fewer than 10 minutes when I found myself entangled in a major parental faux pas.

The nurse burst into our birthing room with an urgency usually reserved for a SWAT incursion. She looked to be in her fifties and had the countenance of someone likely to refuse novocaine during a root canal. She was sturdy, close to my height, and in the crux of her arms was my newborn daughter, Dylan.

“Who drew on this baby?” she hissed.

The nurse fixed her gaze on me without so much as a glance at my wife Reggie, the doctor or my daughter, who admittedly was not a viable suspect. I held her gaze without daring to glance at the permanent marker which lay like a smoking gun on the exam table to my right. I shrugged and pointed vaguely to a far corner of the room while trying to surreptitiously flick the marker out of sight.

We stood there for a tense moment — Reggie and the doctor looking confused, the nurse looking murderous and me looking innocent to the point of looking guilty, before the nurse unswaddled the blanket covering Dylan’s legs. She exposed the bottom of my daughter’s left foot on which I had written the letter “D.”  The nurse waved that foot at each of us as if to say, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you exhibit A.”

Minutes earlier, I watched Dylan come into the world. I cut the cord. Except for the handoff from the doctor, I was the first person in the universe to hold her, look into her eyes, and whisper her first hello. The experience overwhelmed me and reframed my world forever. I cried, and not just because for a terrifying second I thought she looked like a perfect miniature replica of my father-in-law. That hallucination passed as I handed her to Reggie. Then moments later, I stood by our newborn at a little exam table while the doctor counted fingers and toes and checked all the things that doctors check at that point. I was still tearing up.

Then that formidable nurse, someone I had never seen before, announced she was taking Dylan away to clean her up. As she and the doctor turned to Reggie, I panicked, saw the marker that happened to by lying on the table next to me, and wrote the letter D. I had known my daughter for fewer than five minutes and I wouldn’t have been able to pick her out of an infant lineup if my life depended on it. There would be no baby swapping on my watch.

“I wanted to make sure we got the same baby back,” I said.

“That is why we have wristbands,” the nurse said in a stern voice. I suddenly recalled the bracelet they had placed on Dylan’s wrist during that first exam.

“Those can be swapped,” I said, somewhere between a statement and a question. “On the other hand,” I rebounded with conviction, “just try scrubbing that D off of her foot.”

“That is the reason we DO NOT draw on babies!” In the silence that followed, I was worried less about getting the D off of Dylan’s foot and more that the nurse was going to make a break for the door and sprint to child services. Her eyes darted from me to the Sharpie as if I might grab it and start marking other body parts.

She cautiously handed Dylan to Reggie, never taking her eyes off of me. Then she marched to the exam table and confiscated the marker.

“No more drawing on the baby.” She enunciated every word, holstered the marker and backed out through the door.

Reggie looked up from her bed, exhausted after 10-plus hours of labor. “Really?” she asked. “Seriously?” she fingered the ID bracelet on Dylan’s wrist.

I leaned down, kissed her and gently laid my hand on Dylan’s head. All I could think was “miracle,” and as I did, an immense surge of love, vulnerability, humility and responsibility coursed through me with an intensity I didn’t know was possible. Stirred by the rush of those emotions, I rose suddenly and pulled back the blanket around Dylan’s feet. I lifted her left foot and took a long look at my handiwork.

“Now what are you doing?” the doctor asked, anxiously glancing at my hands to ensure they were empty.

“Nothing. Sorry,” I said. Then I put my mouth close to Reggie’s ear and whispered, “Don’t worry. I double-checked. It’s definitely my handwriting.”

Reggie sighed, one hand gently stroking the back of my neck, the other holding Dylan who was nursing quietly. “It’s okay,” she whispered, “Everything’s all right. Breathe.” To this day, I’m not sure if she was talking to herself, me or Dylan.

Love for my newborn took my breath away and, in a heartbeat, sideswiped my ability to think clearly. “Breathe.” Take a moment and give reason a chance to weigh in before impulsively reaching for some version of an uncapped Sharpie. That was my first lesson in parenting and one of the most profound pieces of advice that has guided me through the dizzying mix of euphoria, fear, elation, occasional tedium and frequent tumult that is the imperfect art of fatherhood.

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