My niece Madison Katherine was born on Tuesday, September 18th.

As Maddy stirred in her clear hospital-issued bin, my sister-in-law nodded, smiled, and politely announced it was feeding time.

When I ushered my three kids out in the white-hospital hall Chase looked up at me with a pair of blue-honest eyes and asked, “Dad, how do babies eat?”

Across the hall three nurses lean elbows-on-a counter and talk.

“Excuse me?”

They cut their conversation and look.

“Hi. My son would like to know how babies eat?”

They all smile and one nurse, the most veteran looking of the three, steps forward and approaches.

She leans down.

I step aside and Chase nervously smiles.

“Well,” she scrunches her nose and her voice bases with adult seriousness, “babies get their food from their mother’s breasts. So with their mouth, babies latch…”

Cindy and I say our goodbyes and with our kids trailing behind, we move down the hospital hall, enter the elevator, take the elevator down to the lobby, cross the lobby, exit the revolving doors, cross the breezeway, enter the parking garage, hook a right and find our SUV.

Before he climbs in, Chase holds the door handle, holds me in his eyes with a gleam of a boy who just found a magic key, slipped it into brass hole, turned, and unlocked that old oak chest that hides all the adult mysteries of the universe and exclaims, “So that’s what nipples are for!”

Be well,

Jay