“Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance, with the stars up above your eyes...”

– Van Morrison, “Moondance”

For months, the baby’s due date fixed itself in our minds as an ultimate destination. We were weary swimmers, and it was the shore. We were distance runners, and it was the finish line. We were astronauts, and it was the moon, glowing full and sure in the dark sky between us, waiting for us. It was all we could see.

So imagine my confusion when we finally arrived at the due date, but the baby did not. Now what? Just keep swimming, I guess. Circle the moon. I attended to my morning rituals and went to work, with my cell phone strapped to my side like a six shooter. I was Doc Holliday, ready to draw at the slightest provocation. All day, people at work kept saying, “Hey, shouldn’t you be at the hospital?” I wanted to shoot them with my cell phone.

The day came and went, as did the next. Nothing. The moon just sat there, right in front of our eyes but mysteriously out of reach, smirking at us.

On the third day, at around 10 p.m., Tammy walked over to me after we had finished watching “West Wing,” pulled her shirt up like a stage curtain, and said, “All right, you better talk to this baby.” I moved my hands over her belly and pressed my face close. I told the baby that enough was enough, time for the show to start.

“The moon is full,” Tammy said. “Babies are supposed to come when the moon is full. Let’s go outside and find it. Let’s go out in the street and do a moondance.”

Although it was overcast outside and breezy, it wasn’t really cold, so we put on some fleece jackets and walked out into the front yard. The wind blew shredded clusters of dark clouds across the sky, and within a couple of minutes, once we were in the deserted street, we finally saw it breaking through. Yes, there was the moon.

“OK, let’s dance,” Tammy said.

What else? I sort of picked one foot off the ground, tucked it behind, and began to twist on the other one as if trying to put out a cigarette on the asphalt. I hoisted one arm up as if reaching for a trapeze, and then the other, alternating, and then alternating the foot twist as well. “Dance as if no one is watching,” I read somewhere. That’s what I was doing, and, yes, thinking of the Van Morrison song, one of my favorites:

And when you come my heart will be waiting

To make sure that you’re never alone

There and then all my dreams will come true, dear

There and then I will make you my own

Tammy is a much better dancer than I, with or without music, and she was shaking it, too, to whatever jagged rhythm the jostling treetops could provide. Come on, baby, come on. We danced for a few more minutes.

“OK, that should do it,” I said, grabbing Tammy by the shoulders to steady myself. “That should do it.”

It did. At 2:14 a.m, Tammy sat up on the edge of the bed and doubled over in a powerful contraction. At 2:19 a.m., another wave came, and she called the doctor, who told us we had better come on in. Apparently, she had been timing the contractions for almost an hour, and they were coming every five minutes or so. Finally, our real due date had arrived.

We were like animals before a storm, wandering around in half-panic, trying to remember what to do, where to go next. We made several phone calls to wake relatives, who were predictably excited but understandably disoriented. We made a couple of silly “getting ready to go to the hospital to have our baby” pictures, for posterity. We loaded the van and warmed it up, waiting for friends to come over and pick up poor Kayden, the baby’s 3-year-old sister, who could not get awake enough to fully appreciate the magnitude of the moment.

By the time our friends arrived and we finally got on the road, it was nearly 4 a.m. I had not really slept at all, and was intoxicated by that strange mixed drink of adrenaline and sleep deprivation. Tammy did her best to remain matter of fact on the drive over to Asheville and take part in normal conversation to help settle me down, but the contractions were getting closer together and more intense. Between Canton and Candler, I entertained a fleeting image of delivering the baby myself on the shoulder of I-40, no passersby in sight at such an inhumane hour as this, and the baby, coaxed out at last by a moondance, unwilling to wait one second longer on better personnel or better circumstances.

No, no way. I shook my head, violently shoving the image out of my head as if throwing a drunk through the swinging doors of a saloon. I eased the odometer on up to 80 mph and told poor, contorted Tammy to hang in there, we were going to make it to the finish line.

(Note: We did make it, but that story will have to wait until next time. That‘s OK, I’ve learned a lot about waiting. Chris Cox can be reached at chriscox@prodigy.net)