When Katy stands on that stage and accepts her master’s degree in Molecular Biology, I’m the proudest professor in attendance. Not because she’s amazing. She is, but because she’s my wife and when she turns to smile at me I’m lost in love.

I help her down the stairs worried that she’ll take a tumble and instead of celebrating with a nice dinner out, we’ll spend the evening in labor and delivery.

“Kat, I’m so proud of you.”

She throws her arms around my neck and squeezes. “I did it.”

“Of course you did. I never doubted you.”

She shakes her head and laughs. “No, I mean I made it through graduation. I’ve been in labor for at least an hour.”

“What?” I’d like to throttle my wife, but I can’t because I love her so much. “Kat, we have to get you to the hospital.”

“No way, buddy. I hear they’re worse than a stubborn English professor. It’s early and my contractions are coming every ten minutes or so. I think we have time for food.”

“Love, I think we should go now.”

I don’t wait for the rest of the ceremony to finish. I escort her out of the auditorium, but the damn woman stops at every food vendor she sees.

“Kat, the hospital will feed you. Let’s go. I refuse to have you give birth to Wadsworth in front of a funnel cake stand.”

She pats her stomach. “I’m eating for two, and it’s Watson not Wadsworth. He wants the funnel cake.”

We’ve been debating for weeks about what to name our child. I think Henry Wadsworth Fletcher sounds nice, but Kat wants to honor a molecular biologist named Watson.

I pay for the funnel cake while Kat sits down on a nearby bench. When I get to where she’s at, she’s looking at the ground.

“Uh oh.”

“What do you mean, uh oh?” I look to where she’s looking and see a puddle of water spread beneath her feet.

“No time for cake and lemonade,” she says. “It’s time to go, Professor.”

I swoop down and pick her up and rush her to the car. “Kat, I swear you’re going to kill me.”

She grips my hand and squeezes as a contraction seizes her. “Definitely, especially if the next pain feels like the last. I am definitely going to kill you.”

I drive with as much calm and restraint as a man can have when his wife has cut the circulation off to his hand from her grasp.

We pull into Denver General Hospital, and I help Kat into a wheelchair. She’s whisked off to labor and delivery while I follow behind her. In truth, I’d follow this woman anywhere. She’s taken a man without a purpose or a path and led me directly into her heart.

An hour later, she’s panting and pushing, and a little pink bundle of joy is born.

“What’s her name?” the doctor asks.

Kat and I look up to see the doctor holding a girl.

“You said it was a boy,” she says in a panic. “We don’t have a name for a girl.”

“Oh, Kat, sure we do. Look at her. What do you see?”

Katy looks at our daughter and back to me. “We can’t name her purple screamer.”

“Look at me, love. What do you see?”

She stares at me with soft eyes and an open heart. “I see hope and passion and undying love.”

We name our daughter Hope Fletcher. And just to give me a little something extra, Kat ads in the middle name Austen who just happens to be my favorite female writer.

Who would have thought that I would meet the woman of my dreams in an airport? That she’d choose that moment to be reckless, and I’d choose that moment to be naughty.

It was one night that changed the trajectory of my world, and I’d do it all again if Kat was sitting in that bar waiting for me.

I sit next to my wife’s bed and hold her hand. Our daughter sleeps in an acrylic crib next to her. They are both the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.

Hope stirs and starts to cry. Kat rises from the bed looking exhausted. I give her a soft kiss and tell her, “I’ll get her love.”

I pick up my daughter and hold her to my chest. She snuggles up to me the way her mother does when she’s feeling vulnerable. I sit down and rock her until she falls back to sleep, and I reflect on my life.

I’ve read the greats. I’ve analyzed sonnets. Recited the words of masters. Hell, I’ve even written a few bestsellers of my own, but getting Kat to marry me is my greatest accomplishment, and having this little girl is my finest creation.

Maybe I was wrong about passion and words. Maybe they aren’t always found on a page, but in the heart of a good woman, and the trust of a newborn.