My wife gave birth to a daughter today at 1:13 p.m. That’s 13:13 if you go by Military Time. She weighed 7 lbs 14 ounces and was 20 ½ inches long. Her name is Delilah Rose.

This is our second child born at 8,000 feet. Our first, also a girl, is almost two years old. She calls Delilah “Bee-Bee.”

Outside the window of our hospital room there is a family of Aspen trees. I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at these trees since we arrived. The smallest of the bunch has three yellow leaves.

Tonight, I roamed the halls with no particular destination in mind. Inside the patient care unit there is a shelf of movies on VHS. After our first daughter was born I watched “Dances With Wolves.” I considered watching it again, thinking that doing so may invite the same luck we’ve had with child number one. Normally, I would do this without question. I’m like the athlete who performs a ritualistic task prior to each game, but I am not an athlete. I’m just a guy with superstitions. Tonight, however, I passed on the movie.

Further down the hall, I stumbled upon a small bookshelf on wheels. I used to push one of these around the halls of Duke University Hospital. Judges orders. Fifty-hours community service for drinking a Jack and Coke on the sidewalk. Humbling gig. I once offered a book to a patient with no eyes. They had literally been removed from the sockets. I didn’t notice until it was too late.

The Aspen Hospital bookshelf does not stack up to Duke’s, intellectually speaking. The shelf is comprised mostly of mysteries and romances. Books with titles like “Table For Five“ and “The Heir” and lots of Mary Higgins Clark. There are also a few Tom Clancy’s for those who enjoy the military-espionage-action-thriller genre. As a father, there was one book in particular that caught my eye, “The Tao of Pooh.”

Returning to the room, I found my wife and Delilah fast asleep, Delilah tightly wrapped in a white blanket spotted with yellow rabbits. This moment, I concluded, was meant for Pooh and I.

Our eldest daughter has several Pooh DVD’s. I am not fond of Pooh. He annoys me for reasons I’d rather not discuss, but I’m not the type to pass on a chance encounter. After sanitizing the book with anti-bacterial wipes, I sat by the window to read.

“While Eeyore frets…” the book jacket reads, “and Piglet hesitates…and Rabbit calculates…and Owl pontificates…Pooh just is.”

Before I had turned to the first page, Delilah cried out. A good, healthy cry. I lifted her from the crib and carried her to the window, rocking her slowly in my arms until she drifted back to sleep. I don’t know that I’ll have time to read much of the Pooh book. Maybe I don’t have to.