Take last night for example. I walked out of my office around nine o’clock. The building was nearly empty, so my elevator went express. When the doors opened 29 floors below, I bumped into a familiar colleague. I couldn’t remember her name, nor in what department she worked, but I said hello anyway. By the time we hit the escalator, I’d somehow found a contextual way to tell her the news. That lead, as always, to the following exchange:

Person: Is this your first?

Me: Can’t you tell by my enthusiasm!?!

Person: And how’s your wife doing?

And so it dawned on me as I passed Abbi exhausted and expressionless on the couch, Dear Reader, that you might be wondering the same.

I’m obviously not in her head, and she doesn’t blog, so I’ll have to answer from my perspective: Abbi’s doing great. She’s been steady and brave throughout the last six months, calmly adapting to changes in her body, mind and spirit. I look at her there on the couch, bolstered by pillows, hand on her stomach, little creature squirming and turning and kicking her in the ribs and — though eons of women have gone through the exact same process — I am awed by and envious of her grace and courage. You know how they say a pregnant woman glows? Understatement.

Her first trimester was textbook: morning’s were tempered by dry cereal and orange juice; she had appetite for little else. Even with the sonogram snapshot of our tiny, twelve-week-old embryo, our conversations were in the abstract and far-future.

Her second trimester was a promised too: any immediate light switch that found her energies, appetite and humor restored. She began to show, then to grow steadily: a tiny bump just below her belly button, but contained by her hips. Our twenty-week ultrasound made it real. Our babymoon marked the time. And our first Real Birth class set the stage. When our birthing instructor suggested that one of the easiest and most important things Abbi can do is stay hydrated, I had a case of Poland Spring Water delivered to her office.

Abbi is full-on preggers now, 26 weeks into 40 weeks of pregnancy. She wears pants with stretchy waists, and loose tops, and looks gorgeous. Her stomach is roughly the size of a basketball (her description, not mine), and is soft and round but less so than I might have expected: some spots (presumably the baby’s head and hips) are slightly harder, others a bit squishy. (I spend a lot of time with my head and hands on her belly.) The baby is (according to the numerous books and iPhone apps she reads) over a foot long and about two pounds, or roughly the size of an eggplant. She is working long, challenging days, and usually returns home absolutely exhausted. She’s typically in bed by nine o’clock.

As you’d expect, there is a tremendous amount of psychological transition going on as well. Abbi is, in my experience, far more of an extrovert than I am. She is typically either factual and pragmatic, or completely silent and wildly emotional. Her connection to this new person in her life is almost palpable. I, in contrast, talk all the time, expressing my anxieties, my excitement, and my observations non-stop. It’s possible )I hadn’t considered it until just now) that I need more acknowledgement, validation and support than before (and I need a lot).

It’s a lot, and I’ve scarcely scratched the surface. There’s the forthcoming move, the actual birthing process, the financial aspects, the familial politics and considerations, and how hard I’ve endeavored to cultivate new levels of empathy and accountability. It’s all happening, all marching forward: a thousand, tiny heartbeats counting down like a stopwatch until the day that the three of us meet.

This week, we began playing my recording of “Golden Slumbers” to Baby just before bed. Last night, there was a stirring in the second verse, just after the lyrics, “Smiles await you when you raise.”

“Did you feel that?” Abbi asked.

I often do, but in that moment, I hadn’t. In many ways, I’m just on the outside of this amazing process. Still, I’m doing everything I can to be completely in it.

“Dude, is there any way you can watch the boys this afternoon?” he asked breathlessly. Jen took Ella to the hospital. I’m running up there to meet her.”

My pointer finger was on their Upper West Side buzzer fifteen minutes later. I could hear Ethan and Edward’s tiny feet scurry on the hardwood above me as I climbed the four flights of stairs. I knocked on the door to the sound of giggles. The door swung open mysteriously to an empty hallway.

“Boo!”

The boys leapt from behind the door, then took off down the hall. Chris was writing a list in the kitchen.

“Hey man,” he said shaking my hand with a pained expression. “Thanks for coming over so quickly.”

He ran through the list (pizza’s in the oven, Ethan drinks soy milk, Edward drink’s cow, etc), then distractedly began loading his backpack with odds and ends: clean socks, a water bottle. All the while, the boys ran around the apartment, laughing and screaming and bouncing off of each other like bumper pool. When they disappeared into their bedroom to the sound of muffled laughter, he turned to me and squinted like Clint Eastwood.

“I’ll bet their jumping on the beds.”

Indeed, we found them climbing, tumbling and laughing on their loft beds.

“Gentlemen,” he said, stopping them in the tracks. “What did I say? The beds are for sleeping, not for playing.”

They quickly descended, and ran back into the living room. Chris pulled on his coat, and stepped out the door.

The boys sat at the table with their pizza for approximately thirty seconds, then resumed their frenetic living room rumpus. Edward dumped a box of cars onto the floor, scattering the tiny metal land mines like jacks, then started blowing one of those high-pitched, siren whistles. Ethan began bellowing on a green plastic horn as he leapt from the couch to the hardwood floor. Then they ran for the bedroom and began climbing onto the same loft beds their father warned them not to climb on less than five minutes prior. I narrowly escaped meltdown when I pried Edward from the metal ladder.

“Let’s play some music, guys.”

We sat on the floor, Edward and I with guitars, Ethan on drums, and began writing a song about a Tiger named Gilly (Edward’s idea) and his friend Phillipe the Penguin. It was a simple little number, mostly a C chord. And it worked. The boys focussed up, suggesting lyrics and singing along. But then Ethan rebelled.

“Let’s play some rock ‘n roll!” he said.

My eyes lit up.

“Whaddya’ think about this?” I asked.

“Hold on! Hold on!” Ethan commanded. “Lemme count… 1, 2, 3, 4, GO!”

And we were off, Ethan randomly tapping on his bongos (and anything else within arms reach) with chopsticks, Edward stabbing spastically at his guitar, shaking his hips, tapping his foot and blinking his eyes and like a pint-size Elvis.

We played all afternoon, writing silly songs like “Crazy Nephews” and “Stinky Jack The Pirate.” The boys named our fledgling band, “Stinky Jack,” and imagined us performing at “Shark Hall” (thankfully, they’ve yet to discover that all arenas are named for corporations, unless Ethan has a shell corporation, Shark, Inc., somewhere in The Caymans). Ethan MC’d every performance, “Ladies and gentleman! Thank you!”

You know me: I tried desperately to get one, clean take of “Crazy Nephews.” Alas, neither a six nor a three-year-old’s attention span is made for prime time. Still, we wiled away the afternoon with nary a nephew leaping from a loft bed. Which is about all an uncle can ask for.

I was running two hours behind my “Forever Young” recording schedule when singer/songwriter Misty Boyce finally took her seat at the piano. She banged out “Morning Has Broken” with just seconds of practice in three takes. Moments later, we began recording our cover of The Beatles, “Golden Slumbers.”

“Do you think I’ll be hung in effigy if I added an extra chorus?” I asked.

Misty said simply, “Do it.”

And so we did.

Again, she nailed it in three takes. Still, something was off.

“It feels a little bombastic,” I said through the studio’s talkback. “Can you try using that pedal? What do you call it? The damper or something?”

“Try this,” she said.

Two minutes and seventeen seconds later, we had it: soft, sweet, subtle, and perfect.

Listening back in the control room, I couldn’t help but hug Misty.

“This song sounds like I always imagined this record would feel!”

Last night, Abbi and my little baby heard for the first of what I plan to be hundreds of times a sound and a sentiment I hope s/he will bask in forever and forever: “Sleep now darling don’t you cry.”

The sun was broken free of the weekend’s snow-choked clouds. The trickle of melting snow hummed beneath the rumble of passing subways, far off-music and a faint inkling that birds were beginning to return from their winter hideouts.

Galuminum Foil Studio sits at a crossroads of Brooklyn neighborhoods south of Williamsburg’s newly-gentrified lofts and studios, north of Bed-Stuy’s Marcy Projects, and west of Bushwick.

The streets are wide, nearly empty, and buffeted by low-lying, brick warehouses and razor wire-wrapped vacant lots. The sidewalks were thick with snow, still, a few pedestrians passed. Most were young Hassidic men repeat in their Shabbat shtreimel. And most led a small gaggle of adorably costumed children.

Sunday was Purim, the celebration of Jewish deliverance. The festival celebrates the story of Esther, second (and secretly-Jewish) wife of Persian King Ahasuerus. When the King’s prime minister, Haman, is disrespected by Jewish palace guard Mordechai, he issues a decree to exterminate all of Mordechai’s people. When the King discovers that his wife is in fact Jewish, and that Haman has kept secret Mordechai’s aid during a plot on the King’s life, Haman is hanged, Mordechai is promoted, and his people are saved.

Purim is marked, then, by boisterous joy, revelry and feasting. Children’s costumes, apparently, are a more recent addition to the holiday stemming (as most of the Hassidic Jews of the neighborhood do) from Eastern Europe. Children dress as the protagonists in the Book of Esther, as well as Biblical personalities such as King David to disguise the their identities as Esther did hers.

The children’s costumes were, of course, in stark contrast to their parents’ demure Shabbat finery. Jamie and I smiled as we passed pint-sized policemen, soldiers, pirates and fairies. One little girl tottered leapt a snow bank dressed as a jack-in-the-box. My favorite site, though, was that of a two-foot King Ahasuerus holding his father’s left hand while tugging at his white beard.

Inside, Jamie unpacked her harmonium, a piano-like instrument powered by a hand-operated bellows that blows through sets of free reeds that sound like an accordion. The sound is gentle, soothing and steady, like a baby’s sleepy breathing.

“Amazing Grace” is a Christian hymn written by English poet John Newton in 1779. During the dark chapters of American slavery, the song become an emblematic spiritual. The song saw a resurgence in popularity in the U.S. during the civil rights turmoil of the 1960s.

My grandmother loved the song, so much so that my mother asked me to sing it at her funeral in 1996. It’s always moved me, often to tears, as it somehow connects me deeply with feelings of adversity overcome. Of deliverance.

Barnard professor and Anglo-American slavery expert James Basker says of “Amazing Grace”

There is a transformative power that is applicable… The transformation of suffering into beauty, of alienation into empathy and connection, of the unspeakable into imaginative.

Something in my brief but meaningful friendship with Jamie led me to believe that we’d connect on that. Little surprise, then, when I asked her to duet with me and told her why, that she said, basically, “Yeah, me too.”

We settled on the key of C, and the ballpark of a tempo, then sang it together, there alone in that great room with Bob Dylan looking down from the rafters.

Afterwards I whispered, “I feel the weight of everyone who ever sang this song before,” and grimaced.

“You’ll do fine,” she said.

We retired to our corners: Jamie tracking the harmonium in the great room, me in an iso-booth by the door. We tried a click, but waived off its stiffness. The harmonium, it’s working parts old and creaky, clicked and gasped. I sang in a hush, settling as best I could into the deep meaning and long history of the song, waiving my hands like a conductor. Jamie followed my vocal, ebbing and flowing with each line.

By the third pass — uncertain as I was about my performance but cognizant of the ticking clock and Jamie’s six-month-old son, Milo, waiting at home — we decided we couldn’t do much better. I moved to the control booth and marveled as Jamie effortlessly knocked out her harmony vocal.

Afterwards, I walked her to her car, tucked the harmonium in the passenger seat, and waved her off. Tiny shards of snow fell through a clear, sun set sky like glittering confetti. The neighborhood sparkled with the tiny sound of grace delivered. And finally, for the first time, I could see it shining there before me.

Though the idea behind this new record gestated slowly, it ultimately came together pretty quickly. It starts, I guess, with Ethan.

My brother’s first son, Ethan, was born seven years ago this June. I was eager to expose him to the joy of making music from the start. I bought him bongos, a piano and guitar all by his first birthday. Few things have made me happier in the intervening year’s than witnessing sing-a-long rock shows break out (now featuring my older brother Christofer and Ethan’s younger brother Edward) in their Upper West Side living room. Except maybe the looks on their faces when they see Uncle Benjamin rocking out downtown.

A few years ago, Rockwood Music Hall talent booker (and pal) Tommy Merrill offered me an otherwise unenviable Saturday afternoon slot. With an eye towards I decided to court the Dan Zanes market, and make it an “all-ages” show.

I’ve been performing these “Kid’s Shows For Kid’s Of All Ages” off and on for more than a year (in fact, here’s a video my dad shot last year). They’re not sets full of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” but songs kids and parents can enjoy — timeless classics like “You Are My Sunshine” and “This Little Light Of Mine.”

Of course, all of the above was done bearing in mind the eventuality of my own fatherhood. Fast forward to this fall, then, when Abbi told me she was pregnant and we began this long, exciting and terrifying journey together. My music career (if you want to call it that) wasn’t paramount, but it was present in my thinking, planning and scheming. “What next?” I wondered. “How will I ever make records again?”

In fact, you may have inadvertently been one of my Facebook friends who helped me answer that question. Earlier this year, I asked “What’s your favorite sing-a-long song?” The response was significant. I got hundreds of answers from friends all over the planet, everything from “Itsy Bitsy Spider” (drat) to “Morning Has Broken.” I let those songs percolate in my head, and went about my work…

Ideas are funny. They stew in their own juices, expanding or contracting depending on the viability of their own ingredients. Sometimes they wither, other times they shift, morph and evolve into something else. At some point in the last ten weeks, this one shifted. Like life itself (apparently), it struck me like a bolt of lightning. Two, actually.

The first was to tear a page from the Santana playbook. You’ll recall that, in 1999, the aging-but-venerated guitarist tapped young performers (Dave Matthews, Rob Thomas, etc) to add vitality to his new record, “Supernatural.” It ended up being his biggest album in decades. I decided to do the same, not for the sake of sales (which have slowed to a trickle as my performance schedule has halved, then halved again in recent years), but for the spirit of the record. Which would you rather hear, my solo performance of “The Rainbow Connection”? Or as a duet with Amber Rubarth? Exactly.

The second idea? Do it all for charity. Music (sadly) isn’t the primary breadwinner in my small stable of jobs, hobbies and pastimes, anyway. Why not go the “Holiday Benefit” route and give all the proceeds to some great kid’s music charity?

So all of this was floating around in my head and on various sketch pads (I’ve been drafting fictional album track lists since I was in high school), revealed only in small burst of conversation (inquiry, really) with Abbi. Until last month’s “Hope For Haiti Now” telethon. I was prattling nervously backstage with longtime colleague, father of two, and one-time “Living Room Tour” host, Gil Kaufman, when I sprang the idea on him. “Do it now,” he said. “You’ll never have time once the baby comes.”

The next morning, of course, found Abbi and me on a beach in Dominican Republic. A few days in, when the sun and waves had worked their magic on her, I began unspooling my great plan. Seconds after Abbi bought in, I was on my Blackberry scheduling studio time with Chris Cubeta, and lining up all-star special guests. Amazingly, everyone said yes. And so, by the time I lined up at US Customs in New York City, it was all lined up before me: the tracks, the band (Chris, Tony and Ryan), the guests, and the plan.

Saturday afternoon, the guys gathered at Chris Cubeta’s Galuminum Foil Studios is Brooklyn to lay down basic tracks for the four full-band tracks: Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Simon & Garfunkle’s “The Only Living Boy In New York,” and The Muppets’ “Rainbow Connection.” (You can watch the first in a series of “Making ‘Forever Young’ videos below). This Sunday, Misty Boyce, Jamie Leonhart and Casey Shea will help me lay down “Golden Slumbers,” “Morning Has Broken,” and “Amazing Grace.”

Here’s the complete track list:

1 - Morning Has Broken (featuring Misty Boyce)
2 - Forever Young (featuring Emily Easterly)
3 - The Rainbow Connection (featuring Amber Rubarth)
4 - The Only Living Boy In NY (featuring Chris Abad)
5 - Sweet Baby James (featuring Jeff Jacobson)
6 - Mr. Tambourine Man (featuring Bryan Dunn)
7 - Golden Slumbers (featuring Casey Shea)
8 - Moon River (featuring Bess Rogers)
9 - Hallelujah (featuring Chris Cubeta)
10 - Amazing Grace (featuring Jamie Leonhart)

As you can tell, these aren’t just “Kid’s Songs For Kids Of All Ages,” they’re great, timeless (though, not surprisingly, largely dating to my childhood) moving songs about life and youth. As ordered, they track the arc of the day, from waking (”Morning Has Broken”) to slumber (”Moon River”). And what an amazing slate of collaborators! Each one was chosen for their awesomeness, and their relevance to the song. I can’t wait to hear what we come up with!

Per Gil’s advice, I’m endeavoring to bag everyone’s parts well prior to Abbi’s due date (June 9). I’ll mix and master everything in my (no doubt) copious free time this summer. The current plan is to release at an all-star, charity affair at Rockwood Music Hall (where, of course, Abbi and I met) on/around our third wedding anniversary (October 6). (It’s all connected.)

Of course, my not-so-secret objective is to play these recordings to Baby Wagner as they progress from rough tracks to finished songs and as he/she progresses in the womb (I’ve already been singing them acapella for weeks). Hopefully, we’ll bring Baby Wagner to the release show. And hopefully, these songs will help his/her little neural pathways develop, and maybe even come to mean something to him/her someday.

Either way, as “Crash Site” marked my reckoning with my childhood, or “The Invention Of Everything Else” reflected my passage into marital bliss, “Forever Young” will mark this new chapter in my — scratch that — in our lives.

The class was held at Real Birth, a pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and new parent community center born of the Elizabeth Seton Childbearing Center (where Ethan was born). It’s a brick-walled, hard wood-floored storefront on Eighth Avenue bookended by a laundromat one one side and sushi joint (West Side Sushi, which I’ve been patronizing for years) on the other. I paid special attention to its opening last year, cognizant of it employees and patrons alike: liberal-looking folks, free-thinkers, I imagined, some combination of hippies and yuppies (huppies?), if looks are any indication (which they’re not). I gave Abbi a hand-made Real Birth gift certificate for Christmas (they were closed when I went by for an actual one). I had a hidden agenda, I’ll admit.

I look like a capitalist on the outside, I know. But don’t let the sport coat fool you; I’m dubious of most anything society considers status quo: industrialized agriculture, big banking, media and pharma. Best as I can tell, the free market has messed up everything from energy to education to health care and Happy Meals in the last thirty years. I’m not sure I completely understand why (I guess I can thank my parents who had the temerity to follow their curiosity well beyond the Iowa state line), but — while I may occasionally eat a Big Mac or direct deposit at CitiBank or take an Excedrin — I’ll rarely do so unwittingly. See also: child birth.

I don’t know what my sources were prior to Ethan’s birth, or Rickie Lake’s documentary, “The Business of Being Born,” (I suppose much credit should be given to my mother who spent a number of years working at ACOG, The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, whose best=practices, perhaps, I absorbed by osmosis), it just never made sense to me that a baby be born into bright fluorescent lights, yellowed linoleum and cold stainless steel. Still, I’ve been married long enough to know better than to opine on a bunch of half-baked opinions outright.

So there we were, Abs and me, in the basement of this Hell’s Kitchen “community center” a few minutes after six o’clock on a weeknight. Yoga mats, blocks and blankets were stacked against the wall. A bright-blue exercise ball sat in the corner. Real Birth founder and “The Big Book of Birth” author Erica Lyon sat alongside a white board and some diagrams on a folding chair. She wore comfy-looking shoes, chunky glasses and whispy hair. Seven of us (five mother and two dads) faced her nervously.

She gave us her email and phone number right away, then began speaking authoritatively (like a mother and a teacher) with a hint of exhausted (like a mother and an entrepreneur). She walked us through the trimesters, and considerations around providers and locations. I took notes (”later-term development: kidneys and brain”), beginning to wrap language (episiotomy rate, continuous vs. intermittent monitoring) around my intuitions while Abbi nodded knowingly. When Erica mentioned the value of hydration, I handed Abbi my water bottle. When she explained Lamaze, Braxton Hicks, and Birth From Within, I reached out to rub her shoulders. When she walked us through the labor process, I began to really see Abbi and I delivering our child together for the first time, and found myself flush with tears.

Timeless as it is, commonplace as it may be, and trite as it may sound, the concept of creating life, giving birth and becoming a parent is enormous for me. Were it not for Abbi’s increasingly-significant bump, or last month’s ultrasound, I might not even believe it was happening to us. For a sensitive guy like myself (to say nothing of someone who is so old and lived alone for so long), it’s a lot of change. I keep reminding myself to focus on Abbi’s needs, afford her latitude on account of hormones, and brace myself to become secondary. I keep trying to squelch my anxiety about a sterile birth presided over by some Nazi automaton, about being boxed out of the process, becoming irrelevant. I keep trying to let go of my expectations, my fantasies, my thin skin. I keep telling myself, “It’s not about you.”

Afterwards, it took me approximately six minutes to say the wrong thing (or, the right-intentioned thing the wrong way). I bit my tongue, affording us both time to settle into what we’d learned about the rapidly-approaching gaping yawn. Sliding home through the blizzard-strewn streets, I held Abbi close against the wind, and remembered something Erica said.

“Right now, you’re worrying about your baby’s health, and your baby’s birth,” she said. “And you think, ‘If I can just get the kid out here and count all the fingers and toes then we’ll all be ok!’ But I think you’re going to find that you don’t stop worrying when your baby’s born, you just start worrying about other things.”

Evolutionary biology is an amazing process. It makes something news from a pair of something elses. It divides cell after cell, each one knowing what it is, where it goes, and what it does. It gives a new mother nausea to inform her something major is happening. It protects the fetus from a new mother not yet heeding these new signs by not implanting, then ramps up relaxing production, loosening joints to increase flexibility. It creates vernix to protect a baby’s skin, and create an environment for bacteria to culture and build an immune system. It truly is one miracle after another.

And once we’re here, blinking into the bright light of our new lives? All we can do is keep breathing.

Tarrytown, New York, is a quaint little village tucked into the eastern bank of the ice-choked Hudson River, some 25 miles north of midtown Manhattan. One of my earliest NYC-pals, John Rosenblatt (he of SNL Shorts fame) his wife, Marnie, and son, Wylie, hosted Abbi and me for brunch.

There, forty minutes of breathtaking Washington Irving-style, Metro North-delivered beauty later, we witnessed an alternative universe: three bedrooms, river views, an silence as far as the eye could see. Wylie’s perfectly reasonable teething-cries notwithstanding, it was twenty-five miles from Midtown, and half a world away.

Back home in Hell’s Kitchen, Abbi and I surveyed a few junior fours (aka on bedrooms with semi-enclosed second bedrooms suitable for babies) here at The Westport. Twenty-one floors above ours, our real estate agent (”I’m just an old queen from Chelsea!”) introduced us to a couple just one two-year-old ahead of us. Their living room was wrapped in protective tape, and swaddled in blankets. It was a mess.

Downstairs again, we looked around the apartment and assessed what would have to give: the dining room table, the chairs, the shelves. Sitting there in half-light of disk considering our domain, the lease we were about to sign, and the inevitable future just moments away, I frowned.

“It’s all over, Abs,” I laughed. “Our place is gonna’ be a tiny, toy-strewn mess!”

“Honey,” she said, “It’s not about us anymore.”

In the final minutes of the day, I struck out for a run along the river. The sun was a fierce-orange fireball over the icy Hudson. My iPod was crowded with inspiration. My chest was wracked with frozen air. My head was loaded with a confounding, thrilling future. I ran home into Abbi’s arms.

“I couldn’t do this with anyone else,” I said. “And I can’t wait to do it with you.”

Hours later, we sat amongst friends in front of the television. Superbowl play (frittered away as mine was with preparing homemade guacamole, chile and pizza) paused for halftime. The Who mounted the laser-strewn stage, and launched into their set. Abbi stirred.

“Oh my gosh!” she said, smiling. “I haven’t felt Baby in days. He must like The Who!”

I raced to her side, and placed my palm on her belly.

“Oh my gosh!” i said, smiling. “I felt it!”

And again. And again.

“The exodus is here,” Roger Daltry sang.

Kick.

“Let’s get together before we get much older.”

Our hotel, Casa Colonial, was wedged in the middle of Playa Dorado, a World Bank-funded hotel, golf course and mall development roughly half-way between the Puerto Plata Airport, and Puerto Plata itself. Again, I can’t say enough nice things about the hotel itself, and particularly the staff. Playa Dorado, was oddly-contrived (horse-drawn carriages to shuttle pedestrians the literally dozens of feet between hotels, for example) and antiseptic, though. It took me less than twelve hours to bust out past its gated guard posts and into the real Dominican Replublic which felt immediately more authentic.

So… Monday morning I decide to venture further still. Puerto Plata is a shipping port on the northern edge of Hispaniola, some 150 miles northeast of Port-o-Prince, Haiti, and 250 miles south of Puerto Rico. It’s lush, mountainous, and densely covered in thick jungle. Christopher Columbus, in his first trip, named the mountain above the port Monte de Plata because the foggy peak looked like silver in the sunlight. The name stuck.

As a Spanish Colony, it was considered the main commercial port of the island. In April 1563, the settlement became notorious when the English privateer Sir John Hawkins brought 400 enslaved Sierra Leonese there, trading his victims with the for pearls, hides, sugar and gold, kicking off trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, in which 20 million people were forced into slavery.

I ran northeast on Highway 5 (Avenida Circunvalacion Sur), hopping steep and crumbled curves, and dodging great sinkholes in the uneven sidewalk. The four-lane road (six, really; drivers used the shoulder like a passing and stopping lane) was choked with pickups, vans and motorcycles all loaded well-beyond capacity with passengers, and all spewing thick, gray exhaust that hung over everything. The roadside was dotted with advertisements, most for cellular companies and a just-completed local election. Drivers and passengers alike looked at my like I was crazy.

In just over a mile, I began to pass small, colorful storefronts with gated windows and bare displays. I passed a small, cinder-block strip mall with a horse tack, a pet shop, an appliance store, and a knocked-off Toys-N-Us (complete with bootlegged Jeffrey the Giraffe).

Locals stood huddled beneath trees, waiting in the shade for busses and cabs. I smiled at everyone I passed, and even offered a few broken attempts at “buenos días,” but to no avail; not one person returned my greeting.

Some two miles in, I passed the local baseball stadium. I turned to circle its yellowed, crumbling walls, where I spotted a faded Coca-Cola advertisement a few paces from a burned out car in a deserted back alley (I couldn’t help but consider the irony of importing sugar water to an island built on sugar and slaves).

Avenida General Gregorio Luperon leads from Highway 5 to the sea, where it parallels a wide, deserted, wind and plastic-swept swath of beach clear into Puerto Plata. The sky was fierce blue. The sun shone white through the misty waves. I lept small streams like hurdles, striding towards a great outcropping of rock a few hundred yards out to sea snapping photos. Which is when it dawned on me.

For a year or more now, I’ve shot a series of short videos in beautiful, tranquil places: Smith Point, Nantucket, Hulluver Creek, South Carolina. Keepsakes, if you will, of quiet times to stow away for harried ones.

I knelt there in the sand, steadied the camera on a piece of wood, pressed record, and lost myself in the rush of adrenaline, wind and waves. What happened next? Press play.

Were Mr. Keane to illustrate Abbi and my week in the Domincan Republic, he wouldn’t need to use much ink.

Casa Colonial provided VIP treatment from the start, ushering us through customs, into a waiting van, and straight to our room. Suite Six (or Doña Rosa, so named for the owner), was a five-room affair: living room, dining room, bedroom, bathroom, spa. Everything was sparse, crisp, and local, from the sculpture on the living room table to the mini-fridge full of El Presidente Cerveza.

After sleeping off my “Hope For Haiti” hangover on the beach, we settled into a lazy routine: a few minutes in the gym, two-hour breakfast on the veranda, afternoons reading on the beach, sunset on the rooftop pool (virgin piña coladas for her, Casa Colonial’s special “Four Diamonds” for him), dinner in the room, rest, and repeat.

Playa Dorado is a complex of resorts just south a Puerto Plata, a sleepy port on the north-central coast. The beach is average, its waters mudded from dredged sand and shored choked licenced hucksters — cigars, sarongs, bandanas, sunglasses, you name it — hocking their wares on European and Canadian package tourists. It would be largely skippable were it not for our impecable little boutique hotel.

We did break out beyond the wire a few times, once to scuba dive (and snorkel) in nearby Sousa (beautiful little cove besought be the same uncomfortable capitalist impulses; beach chair rentals were one hundred pesos a day and the visibility was for naught), and once for a long run to El Fuerte de San Filipe.

Mostly, though, Abbi and I just spent our time together, taking walks, making plans, debating baby names, and generally relishing a few days of relative tranquility. It was about all we could have hoped for, plus eighty degree weather.

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