The Switch

All of us were born unaware of who we were. Some of us had names before we were conceived. Some were given nicknames right after. Others might've had to wait a few weeks after we were born, parents trying to figure out just how to put a human title to the thing they now held. Honestly, I can't exactly remember how it went with our son.

My wife mentioned names but I cast most of them off, remembering someone, anyone, distant faces of my past having the same surname. None would do. Every suggestion blended the blurred image of my unborn child to the people I'd once known, or still knew. It was as if the mentioned names had already conjured up the personality of our son, placed him in the same body of all the Mike's and Bob's and Chris's I'd grown up with. Already set him in the path of overdrinking and vomiting in pillow cases and thinking that he, in one way or another, was going to be the next great thing. And nobody could stop it from happening.

After some type of deliberation, we finally decided on a name that I didn't associate with anyone, not personally at least. We came up with something we, or most imporantly he, could live with. The name's part tree, part silly looking British actor who made a career of staying silent and letting his face do all the talking. It can be sung in a childhood song we all know without changing a crucial vowel. It can be said over and over again, at least in my mind, and never get old. And if it does, please punch me, because I don't want to become one of those dads. So, after what seemed like little thought, three cities ago now, four or five jobs earlier, a college or two (I can't remember) between that, Rowan was finally born before actually being born.

You'd think a name is sacred, or at least memorable. But, this wasn't the case. At least not in hospitals.

Rowan wasn't more than three or four hours old when the nurses strapped a bracelet around his wrist, his given family name typed out under the plastic casing. I remember looking at the name before he left us for the first time: Landers. By now he'd already spent his entire life with us. He was already a part of us, and I wasn't sure if I wanted him to leave or not. He wasn't yet an annoying relative but he wasn't someone you could exactly have an approaching dawn conversation with either. He just was.

The nurses, or maybe the doula or midwife, said he would be right back and wheeled him away. He didn't cry. I didn't either, and I don't remember either of us making a sound since he'd wailed the fluid from his lungs. They took him away, in a sort of lifted lettuce crisper-heat lamp combo on wheels, and he looked up at them with a look on his face that said, "Can't this wait?"

For the next hour he went through routine tests. My wife and I might've slept, but I can't be sure. After a while I got up, stared out the window at the view of other hospital buildings, the look towards other windows that were looking back on me. Before long the door opened and one of the doulas wheeled Rowan back in. She set his plastic vehicle next to our bed and I looked down at him.

A few hours earlier I'd watched him squeeze out into this world, saw the gore that had kept him alive for nine months get uncurled from his neck. I even cut the lifeline, in a sort of nervous diagnoal, which I know he'll later blame me for his upper ridged outie. At that time he wasn't yet my son. He seemed more of a thing to study, to poke and prod. His arms and legs were splotched, a strawberry and cream complexion. His head was too round, nose too small. He was long, which seemed one of the attributes he'd gained from me, hands fisted in "the world has always wronged me" sort of way. His ears weren't perfect, like mine, and when he finally focused on me, not looking too happy, I knew this was my kid.

The doula said we could sleep with him, and it wasn't long before my wife and I decided to pick him up and lay him between us on the bed and get the most sleepless night of our lives.

A few days later we left. My wife was ordered into a wheelchair, a procedure I wish was used more often for everyday activities. I got our car, drove it around to the ambulance circle and picked my family up. Don't tell my family this, but I felt important putting Rowan into his car seat for the first time, like no one else had ever done the same thing before. And now, after performing the same act over thirteen thousand times, it's amazing how things change.

Anyways, somewhere between the hospital and whatever home we lived in then, one of us clipped off Rowan's hospital bracelet. We wanted to keep it, his name, his first link to an outrageous bill. One of us held it up to the other. We smiled. One of us read it.

"Cisneros."

"What?"

"Cisneros."

We looked at each other. We glanced at the sleeping baby behind us.

"Our son's last name is Cisneros."

In the rearview, I stared at this child. His head was sunk deep in the extra padding of the carseat, ears bent forward, his arms and legs already seeming too long for his yellow onsie. He twitched, maybe already dreaming. I held the bracelet between my fingers, read the name again. Behind me I heard a squeak, a couple of airy puffs, and looking back I saw the baby's legs kick straight out, his hands flare and grip back together into dimpled fists. He farted again and I tossed the bracelet to the floorboard.

"Nope," I said, and smiled. "They made a mistake. He's a Landers through and through."