I saw the robot, finally!

Tonight's blog is going to be a little sideways from the usual fair. Mary Jane is upstairs next to laptop and the camera snoozing. I don't want to bother her, so I'm down here writing a quick little post. She's sick. The nice thing about having a graduated nurse practitioner for a wife is that she's pretty good at self diagnosing the problem. She knows what she has, and it's nothing serious, but she has a slight fever and feels icky. She needs to get up soon to take care of things only she can do, so I'm letting her sleep a little while. With the camera and stuff next to her you'll just have to wait until tomorrow for pictures and details about the girls.
In the mean time,
I finally saw the robot. Way back in the beginning of all this there was almost a week where we were living at Barnes, and, after the girls were born, I was wheeling Mary Jane between the two hospitals so we could go see the girls. The path we would take was a long and twisty one. The first time I took it was Saturday August 30 when I came down from the OR with Emma Jane and went over to Children's. I didn't notice the sign that first trip. I was a little distracted. But later that night coming back to Barnes I noticed the sign which said "Robot Path." I was still pretty distracted so I didn't think to much of it, other than to say "huh". Well, as the days wore on and we traveled back and forth between the two hospitals my curiosity quickly began to grow. I mean...robot path? What's that all about? Eventually I asked Mary Jane about it (she is familiar with the path between the hospitals for rather unpleasant work related reasons) and she said "yeah, there's this robot that goes back and forth making deliveries, actually it's kind of annoying."
Bam. There's an image of R2D2 rolling down the hall in my mind. It was quickly replaced with an image of Twiki, which in turn was quickly replaced with an image of R2D2 going "beede beede beede, good luck in space Buck."
Mary Jane quickly pushed all of these images aside and told me it didn't look like a "robot" it was more just of a rolling box.
Any of you who know me will not be surprised to know that I quickly became obsessed. The obsession was even greater because this was the early days of things. I needed to see that robot. I needed the sheer thrill of all my nerdy science fiction dreams coming true in the form of an actual robot doing actual work. Not some silly vacuum cleaner. Oh, no boys and girls, this, this was a robot doing work at a hospital. A fully automated machine accomplishing a task with it's little robotic mind. Every time we walked (rolled) down the hallway I would keep my eyes peeled. However this was during labor day weekend and usual business at Barnes was suspended (something in general that was nice) and so the robot was not out and about making deliveries. During that entire stay I never saw the robot.
Flash forward to last Thursday. I'm at Children's visiting the girls during lunch and then walk through the passage to Barnes to do a hospital visit with one of the members at Salem. And there it is! It was rolling right down the hallway. My initial R2D2 thought hadn't been that far off. It didn't look like R2D2 but it did look a little like this star wars robot. (except shinier and rollier) At one point it "sensed" someone it's way and it stopped and did this weird maneuvering thing to get around. It arrived at it's destination and loudly announced it's arrival and the arrival of the package it was carrying. Evidently it even had a secret compartment, because I couldn't see any packages. Secret compartment or it is a really stupid robot. One or the other. Either way it was about the coolest thing I had seen since I saw Snake Eyes guarding the president of the United States at the White House. But that's another story.

All this got me thinking. If I could wake up tomorrow and it would be the day we brought the girls home, and I would have no memory of all this I would have to turn the offer down. No, not because of the robot. And not because I think loosing memory is one of the scariest things that can happen to a person. But because there have been good times in all of this. I wish it hadn't happened this way. But it did. And I have seen my girls baptized. I have seen them cry. I have seen their personalities existing weeks before many people even believe they are alive. I have held my girls and I have cried over them. Yes, some of those tears were tears of fear, but many were tears of joy, and I wouldn't want to loose them. I have seen that God will do things his way because he is God, but I have also been an eyewitness to his mercy. I've kangaroo cared, and I've swaddled. I was the first to get pooped on and I've put clothes on them. I've seen them fussy and I've seen them just sort of looking around. All this I have done with my wife and my Lord by my side. Who would want to get rid of all of those memories?
Don't get me wrong. Not recommending this whole experience to people who are bored on a Saturday night, and there is a large part of me that just wants this phase to be over and to have my beautiful girls "safely" at home. Just saying that I wouldn't dump these memories even if I could.