When Joe is older I will say, I remember the day you were born. It was the first cold day of the fall, and as I drove down into the city along the river all the pleasure boats were gone, but the work boats were out, hauling God knows what up and down the Hudson. The boats were red and black, enormous, you had to look and look back again to see the whole of them while keeping your car on the road. I drove my car down the highway next to these tugs and barges and I could imagine their metal insides, their dark stairways, the raised sills, the clanging noise their doors made when they swung shut. I could imagine what it was for the people on them to stand out on deck and look over the water in my direction and see people driving into the city, headed towards the mysterious things that we were all headed for, driving south that morning. Or maybe I wasn’t mysterious to them, maybe they could see me, in their mind’s eye, as I drove my car, parked my car, and walked down the street that first bright cold day of fall, as I stopped in the store to get your mother an egg and cheese sandwich. Maybe they could see—and why couldn’t they see this? They moved freight up and down the Hudson, so what couldn’t they do?—maybe they saw the man at security, the elevator, the sign that instructed me to press the button to get into the maternity ward. They could see your mother, tired, happy, lying on the bed in a pool of light, and your father, tired, happy, sitting in a chair. Could they see you, Joe, in the hat that wouldn’t stay on your head, eating your blanket, trying to eat your mom? Could they see anything as beautiful as you, Joe, on the boats that went up and down the Hudson that day?