Passing First

The cookie was delicious, chocolaty and warm
and wet like the first kiss, the one I choose to remember anyway.
It fed a spot – the kiss – deeper than 12-year-old me could imagine,
warming things I wanted to ask my dad to explain.

I did ask him, years later, if I could take Mom’s Buick Regal to college.
That ’78 coupe glowed because I washed it weekly, turtle-waxing
the two-tone silver finish and alloy wheels.
The Pioneer tape deck I purchased blasted out the brassy joy of
Chuck Mangione, trumpet god.
How did he make those sounds come from the same horn I played?

One night, screaming noise of red and blue lights filled the Regal – a first.
Through a beam from a too-large flashlight,
The officer’s serious face spit
A few pretty easy questions at me.
What’s your hurry? Do you know the speed limit in town?
Why didn’t he ask me about the two girls, the bags of ice and frozen strawberries sweating together
on that soft blue fabric of the front seat?
Maybe he knew how to make margaritas.

Terrified again, but for a different reason,
A smiling man in a white uniform handed our first child to my wife and me,
illuminated by healing hospital lights
You three can go home now.
We looked quizzically at each other, newborn and I, did I even know how to drive?

The firsts rushed at me, past me.
First couch in the first house surrounded by the
first sweet scent of lilies of the valley, smothered by
first dirty diaper.
And the first time the little guy slipped and cut his lip
on that part of the wooden stairs up near the top that I
didn’t have time to fix or
didn’t know how and
was too scared to admit yet another I don’t know.

All I know about time is it doesn’t hold time for firsts
This might be a good time for a line about seconds, but that seems cliché and
I don’t have time.
I have my first grandchild now.
And I just want to bring him his first cookie. It will be delicious chocolaty and warm.