Jobe's final moments as the "baby of the family"; a lynx gives a most significant gift to my new grandson

Here he is, Jobe, in his final day as the baby of the family. For one-and-a-half years he has occupied this spot. Throughout this time, he has known nothing but total adoration from virtually every adult that he has ever met. At home and elsewhere, as the cutest and youngest person in the group, he has been the center of attention and that attention has all been good attention.

Jobe thinks that is just how life is - something that takes at the center of affection, attention and adoration.

While I am confident that much affection, attention and adoration will continue to come his way, an event is about to take place that will soon remove him as the central focus point of adoration, affection and attention. Another cute person will soon occupy that cherished but briefly held spot.

At the very moment this picture was taken, his mother was in the hospital in labor and had been for over seven hours. I had gone into town to help Margie take care of Jobe and his brother until his new sibling could be born. Margie and I have just picked the two of them up from daycare. We will walk home with them, as only a few hundred yards separate their daycare center from their house.

Before we reach the house, we stop at the park, where Kalib and his grandma played on the teeter totter. Very recently, Kalib and his mother were walking down the path in the space between the first picture and this one, when Kalib stopped to point out that he had just spotted what he called a "kitty." 

He wanted to pet the kitty.

Lavina looked and was shocked to see a lynx standing about 20 feet away. The lynx hissed at them and then dashed into the trees.

Anchorage is our big city. This is the kind of city Anchorage is.

Melanie had joined us. She watched as Kalib climbed a rope ladder.

Jobe slid down the slide.

At the house, Rex and Kalib played with toy trains as we all waited for the call that would tell us it was time to head to the hospital.

Eventually, my effervescent, ever pleasant, good-natured little grandson grew tired and irritable. It was time for bed. Margie gave him a bath and, with help from Lisa, I trundled him into his jammies. He resisted all the way.

Margie took him into the bed where he usually sleeps with his parents. She would spend the night with him there, beneath the photo of one of his parents' wedding kisses.

Rex left with his girlfriend Courtney and her mother Janet. I returned to the living room to wait for that call with Lisa, Melanie and Charlie. Martigny was there, too, coming toward me from Lisa, who adores all cats.

As we visited at the kitchen table, Melanie and Charlie pondered a grapefruit. We all hoped for a girl. In theory, if this baby were not a girl, then this would end our chance at getting a granddaughter and a niece from Lavina and Jacob as they plan to stop at three.

After a few hours, it began to appear that the big event would not happen for awhile.

Everybody went home, leaving Margie and me alone with Kalib and Jobe.

I slept on the couch, but I didn't sleep good. I was still awake at 1:30. After I finally fell asleep, I woke often, with strange dreams and visions playing in my head. The details have gone soft, but the feelings remain.

I was a bit worried. Lavina had gone into the hospital at about 10:00 AM, after her water broke. At about 10:00 PM, her contractions had suddenly stopped. A womb without water is a womb that cannot long be lived in. This baby needed to get born.

At 5:30, I awoke for what I knew was for good.

I went into the master bedroom and laid down on the bed with the sleeping Margie and the sleeping Jobe. Soon, I got a text from Lavina. We then spent some time texting back and forth. As she always is, she was being brave and tough and pleasant, but she did confide that she did not know why it was happening this way, and said she was almost at a breaking point.

If the baby did not get out of the womb within 24 hours of the water break, then she would likely be facing a C-section.

Still, she inquired with concern about Margie, who had spent a couple of days not feeling well, and she gave me instructions on getting the boys to daycare in time for breakfast once they awoke. After we had accomplished that, she wanted us to come and visit.

After we dropped the boys off, Margie and I headed over. The delivery room had been darkened. Quiet - except for the sound of the baby's heartbeat, broadcast and amplified through the monitor, mixed with the sounds of pain and hard breathing that Lavina would make every time a contraction would hit - yes, she was having contractions again - about two minutes apart.

The doctor moved the C-section time from 10:00 AM to 12:00 noon - but if that baby was not out or coming out at noon, then it would be a C-section delivery. Despite the contractions, Lavina did not feel that vital urge to push.

The day before, I had dropped my Canon 5D Mark II off at the repair shop to get the sensor cleaned before I left for New York. I had only my Canon 1Ds MIII with only one lens, a wide angle. It is the most expensive camera that I ever bought but it is also a big, bulky tank-like thing and it clicks loudly.

It does not do nearly as well in low light as the 5D. I decided not to worry about pictures until the baby was born, because I did not want to disrupt the room with loud, clicking, shutter noises. So I sat down and made myself quiet, but I did take this frame. This is Lavina's good friend Natalie, Maid of Honor at her wedding. Nat has assited Lavina with the births of all her baby's.

Nat knows how to massage her aches and pains, how to help keep her spirits up. She is quiet and unobtrusive almost to the point of invisibility, but she is there and Lavina knows it.

Jacob, too. He is there. Lavina knows it.

Soon, the clock passed 11:30. No baby. Still no urge to push. The C-section began to appear inevitable.

I believe it was already a few minutes past 11:40 when Lavina got a sudden and painful urge to push - and she let us know it. The attendant nurse had stepped out for a minute. Lavina's doctor was on another floor. The nurse was summoned., appeared almost instantly, then summoned other nurses and the doctor. In just a moment, the other nurses had joined her. The doctor headed for the elevator, but something apparently happened with that elevator that slowed her descent.

The nurses moved with amazing rapidity and intensity, moving apparatus here, there, adjusting the birth light. They knew this baby was coming - fast. They could not wait for the elevator to bring the doctor. They had to act - now.

I kept my vision discretely turned away from the spot of birth. Suddenly, I heard a tiny but wonderfully strong voice cry out in pain and shock.

Then I was crying; suddenly, I was laughing; laughing and crying. Suddenly, there was a baby in front of me; crying out loud, the blood of new life upon it. My tears blurred my vision, my laughter unsteadied my hand; I took the picture, anyway.

Who is this nurse that delivered my third grandson into this world, as his doctor was trapped elsewhere by an elevator?

I don't recall seeing her before this event happened, nor do I recall seeing her after my new grandson was safely delivered and cleaned up.

Whoever you are, nurse, I thank you. With all my heart and soul, I thank you.

You have my eternal gratitude - and the gratitude of everyone in this family.

Grandson # 3 was born at 11:47 AM - after his mom had been in labor for approximately 26 hours.

And here I am, still complaining about how exhausted I am.

He was a couple of weeks early and weighed five pounds, 13 ounces and was 18.5 inches long.

Although we did not know, we had all been hoping for a girl. Jacob and Lavina had a number of girl's names lined up, but were short on boy's names.

It would be awhile before grandson #3 would get his name.

Mother, father and baby.

Soon, Rex, who had been working on the construction of another part of Providence Hospital, joined us.

Everyone, including me, took turns holding our new grandson. Here he is, with his grandma. She just met him, yet, already, she loves him as dearly as she loves anyone who ever lived.

He has a name now:

Lynxton Dischinn'd Hess.

Lynxton - in honor of the lynx who surprised his mother shortly before he was born.

Dischinn'd - the name of the White Mountain Apache clan that his grandmother, father and all his aunts and uncles belong too.

It is the way of both the Apache and Navajo to go with their mom's clan and tribe, so Lynxton will be of the Lo'kah, and will be enrolled in the great Navajo Nation - home of a major branch of the Dene, whose numbers reach into northern Canada and Interior Alaska.

Apaches are also of the larger Dene, but they call themselves, "N'dee."

Navajo, Apache, Athabascan - these are all names placed upon them by other people; just as "Eskimo" was placed upon the Iñupiat and their other Inuit relatives.

Soon, a medical technician came in to do a blood draw. Lavina could not bear to see the flesh of her son get poked, nor to hear the sound of him crying out in pain, so she plugged her ears, closed her eyes and pulled the sheet over her face.

Little Lynxton didn't cry much at all - a short little blast with the first poke, none that I remember with the subsequent pokes.

Jacob feels the tiny body of his new son...

...then checks out his tiny hand...

...and then his tiny feet.

Dad is pleased.

Margie and I then returned to Jacob and Lavina's house at somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 PM, exhausted, ready to nap.

Margie lay down to sleep on the short arm of the "L" shaped couch. Above her hung a picture that I had taken of Kalib on the first day of his life, alongside the Apache cradleboard his Aunt LeeAnn had made for him. Lynxton will be carried in a Navajo cradleboard, made by his Aunt Cori.

You will see pictures of it in the future.

I lay down on the long arm, but, exhaused though I was, I could not go to sleep.

So I got up, went outside, sat in the car and listened to the radio - first, Terri Gross on Fresh Air, followed by All Things Considered.

I wish I could fall asleep and stay asleep the way Margie can. I think my life would be a lot easier then. I think I would accomplish more and do better work. I might even be able to exercise some business sense. Perhaps we would not be in the continual jam that we always are... if only I knew how to sleep.

To be quite honest with you, given this continual blur of exhaustion that I live in, I don't know how I accomplish anything at all.

At 4:20 PM, I headed toward the camera shop to pick up the 5D. On the way back, I stopped at daycare to get Kalib and Jobe.

I saw Jobe first, in the playground on the other side of the fence. He saw me and came running to the fence.

His life had just undergone a change of gigantic significance, but he had no idea of it.

Yet, when I look at this picture, I almost think that, somehow, even if he did not know, he had a sense of it.

He had been living with a pregnant mother for almost nine months. He probably picked up more than we might think.

Little people are smart.

Jobe is very smart.

I picked up Margie and the four of us went to the hospital, where Lavina had been moved from the delivery room on the first floor to a room on the fourth.

Jobe and Kalib got their first look at their new brother.

Lavina then handed the not-yet named Lynxton to his Aunt Melanie, and took both of her other babies into her arms.

Then each got some alone time with their mom.

Lisa was there, too.She had held him before we arrived, but I did not get to witness it.

After Lisa got up, Kalib came over. At first, he refused to look at or further acknowledge his new brother.

Then his dad coaxed him to come and give a touch. He seemed to like it.

Jobe, however, had taken a look and it seemed that was enough for him. He was brought over, but no one could convince him to look at or acknowledge his little brother.

When his dad brought his brother close, Jobe tried to push him away. I am not worried, though. It is hard to give up a position so sweet as baby of the family. Kalib did not want to yield that position to Jobe, but he did. And Kalib loves Jobe.

He does experience some natural sibling rivalry and jealousy, but nothing that strikes me as serious.

I am confident Jobe will love his younger brother.

Still, I do worry a bit about his position as the middle brother.

His Uncle Caleb was the middle brother in our family, between Jacob and Rex, and often found it a tough place to be.

Here he is, our third grandson, named for the lynx that suprised his mother: Lynxton Dischinn'd Hess.

I don't know what time I drove home. Seven PM? Approaching 8:00?

I was exhausted, wonderfully happy and yet painfully sad. Wonderfully happy for the obvious reason; painfully sad because I am headed to New York City tomorrow. I have been greatly looking forward to that trip and still am, but suddenly it has become the event that is going to prevent me from seeing my new grandson again until sometime in early October - and then only briefly because I must go north almost immediately afterward.

I do not know how long I will be gone then - perhaps a week, perhaps a month.

My little grandson will grow rapidly in my absence. He will change significantly - and I will miss it.

This knowledge left me feeling down - made me wonder if maybe it is time for me to forsake my wild, wandering, ways, settle down and devote myself to my grandchildren.

Many people my age have retired, many will retire within just a few years of the age I now am.

I ran into one of my retired friends at Walmart the other day. He had worked fulltime for what over the years has been my biggest client. He is three years older than me. He looked happy and fit, relaxed; he told me how great it was to be retired, how he could now afford to run his own bed and breakfast business and soon planned to start a furniture shop with his sons. He was really enjoying his grandchildren.

It didn't really matter if his businesses made money; he had enough to live on.

But I can't retire. For one, I have been a lousy businessman and have no means to retire. Furthermore, I have never wanted to reitre. I have too much work left to do.

Yet, a huge amount of that work could be done right here, at my house, in Wasilla, less than an hour's drive from my grandchildren.

But that ain't gonna to happen. I can't afford to stay home. And at my core, as placid as I may appear on the surface, I churn in perpetual restlessness and wanderlust.

One day, I will quit wandering. On that day, or perhaps the next, I hope someone pitches me into the creamatorium and then casts my ash to the wind.

But maybe I am wrong in this long-held notion.

I missed so much of my children's growing up. Maybe I should be there for my grandchildren.

Maybe... maybe... nah... can't happen... well, maybe... but if so, how?

View images as slides

I leave for New York City early tomorrow (Friday) morning, so I will not post again prior to Saturday, possibly even later.

32 hours pass and I look into but one human face - guess who's? Wrap of Jobe's baby shower

Just after 9:00 PM Sunday night,  as is now the norm, Margie left here with Jacob and Lavina so that she could spend the week babysitting Jobe. From that moment up until this morning, 32 hours later, I spent my entire time, save maybe three minutes, alone with the cats. I caught not even a glimpse of Caleb. I looked into but one human face, and that for only about three minutes.

It was Carmen. She showed me this little vase from which not flowers but little hand-prints grow. It was her Mother's Day present from her four year-old son, Branson. Thus I shot,

Through the Metro Window Study, #1212 - Carmen with Branson's Mothers Day present

She was very pleased, but still she found it in her to sigh. "Pretty soon, he's going to be chasing girls, Bill. He will Bill, he will."

I should hope so.

OK. Now I back up again to last Friday. What are all these people so raptly looking at? Even that guy on the TV is looking.

Why, it's little Jobe, still tied into a cradle nap.

Jobe is admired by his aunties, Melanie and Lisa.

After he wakes, he gets passed around. Sandy takes him.

Jobe received many wonderful and exotic gifts, from cute little outfits to diapers and toys.

That's little Anna, sitting peacefully upon the floor. That's Cooper in the background. Yesterday, I mentioned that Cooper is mischievous.

Here is proof.

Cooper, Anna and Ian were all watching TV when Ian leaned too far back in his chair. 

This is Ngone and her daughter, Kathleen. Ngone comes from Senegal and has been in the US for 6.5 years, Alaska for a year-and-a-half. She does not much care for life in Alaska. "The winters are crazy," she explained. Before she and husband Dave, who wears the baseball cap in the group picture, moved here, they lived in Los Angeles. She liked it much better there. She loved getting out on the freeways to drive anywhere she wanted to go. Here, she is surrounded by big, huge country and there is no easy way to get into most of it.

She also remembers Africa with much warmth and fondness - all the little neighborhood shops and street vendors, the brightly-colored, beautiful clothing that the women sew and wear.

By comparison, everyday American clothing looks kind of drab. When she shows her mother pictures of her and others running around the US dressed in blue jeans and casual clothes, Mom is a little horrified to think that women would actually dress that way.

One thing about Jacob and Lavina's home - it has no shortage of stuffed Muzzys. Kathleen finds one and loves it.

Yesterday, did I not say that Kathleen is not only beautiful but cute, too?

And very bright, too.

She is a girl with roots in North America and Africa. I wonder where life will take her?

I know it seems unlikely, but I hope that in 20 years I am still around, still taking pictures, still writing stories and that I might come upon her somewhere. I would take her picture again, talk to her, find out how things are going, where she has been and where she hopes to go.

Kathleen - 20 years from now, if I still walk the earth, remember to give me a call. We must get together.

You met Kathleen's brother David yesterday. Well, here he is again.

What will he be doing in 20 years?

And this little beauty, Ashlyn, here in the arms of her mother, Tamara, what will she be up to?

Ashlyn also found a stuffed Muzzy to love.

Yesterday, I also posted a group shot from the shower, but there were a few individuals present, such as Caleb and Kalib, who were not in it, but they came running to get into this one.

I am not certain how it happened, but there was a beautiful young friend of Lavina's by the name of Toni in the lower left hand of the shot that ran yesterday, right there alongside Natalee and Jazmin, but she is out of the picture in this one. I tried to make certain everyone was in, but to take this picture, I stretch my arms upward and hold the camera as high above my head as I could reach and so I had a very poor view of the LCD screen.

You will note that of my immediate family, Rex is missing. He had gone to Seward to take some sailing lessons in a 45-foot boat with a pretty tall mast. One day, I hope to get pictures of him sailing such a boat.

Little Anna, Ian, Anna and Sharon are not in this picture, either. I thought this was because they had left.

They must have just gone down to the playroom to play, though, because soon they came back.

Rusty, husband of Natalee, father of Cooper. I mentioned that Cooper is mischievous. So is Rusty.

Sandy, with Andrew. The two plan to marry in September, in Hawaii. Even though I am not a wedding photographer, Sandy looked at the album that I made for Jacob and Lavina. She wants one like that. She wants me to come to Hawaii and photograph their wedding.

Again, let me reiterate... I am not a wedding photographer!

But Hawaii...?

A photographer must be flexible, right?

This post has gotten entirely too long, but, crimeny, you didn't expect me to leave Kalib out, did you?

One shot from today: Baby boy Jobe Atene Hess - more pictures will follow

I am exhausted and must go to bed as soon as I can, so I decided to post just one image from today's shoot. I chose this one for the simple reason that it is the first scene that I shot on the second compact flash card that I exposed today and that card is the first that I am downloading because it was in my camera when I came home and plugged it in - and I do like the image.

At the end of that card, there are some shots of Kalib meeting his new brother for the first time and I had thought that I would use one of those. But CF cards download extremely slowly out of my Canon 1Ds Mark 2 into my computer and Lightroom, and it will be awhile yet before that picture appears.

I do not have it in me to wait right now. Except for a cat nap after the birth, I have been up now for over 40 hours and I am fatigued, mentally and physically, even as I am overjoyed that our newest grandson has emerged from the womb to make himself known.

In addition to this card that is currently downloading, there is the first card that I filled, which is twice the size of this one and will take twice as long to download - and there is another card from my pocket camera.

The pocket camera card will download fast, but it has to wait its turn and it is the third in line.

So I am going to bed.

Sometime after I get up, I will download the remaining two cards, do somewhat of an edit and make a more complete post on today's event.

Jobe weighed in at seven pounds, ten ounces - a full pound more than did Kalib - and came out 19 inches long. The woman giving Lavina a neck message is her good friend, Natalie.

Jobe is greatly loved and we are glad to have him here.

More later.