Sunday, January 16, 2011
maybe some more.
i think i'm getting past the part where i can never articulate it, and trying to do feels like distance, like i'm trying to organize the inchoate and in so doing make it less, make it normal, and it is way better than normal.
now, it feels more like: you are a kid. and there are parts of this i want like mad to remember. you have started laughing in a whole new way. all of you is involved. laughing just used to be something you could do, and now i can tell you do it for the same reason we do it: you want it because it feels so good.
i was telling someone a few days ago that one of the reasons this time feels so precious is that this is never an uncomplicated relationship, the one between parent and child. i mean, i had a dream last night that my mother and i were beating each other up, true story. but for you, for now, it's relatively simple. you've achieved the impossible through lack of trying. there is just me, and there is just you, and i make the world turn, and you are delighted every time i walk into the room. it isn't just adolescence that's going to break this; you'll start talking and being your own guy and that's what it's all about, but this simplicity will be over. and there's no moving backwards to revisit it later. you're only growing in one direction. like my friend bdon says, time moves forward (it's the punchline to a joke i won't re-tell here, not a dumb commonplace). life gets complicated.
i hope that one of the recompenses for this is that i get a little more uninterrupted sleep.
i feel like i should thank you for giving me this. you, as in the baby. you-the-baby. the baby gives you change, change from without that doesn't (or hasn't for me, thank god) involve catastrophic loss or . . . or whatever. i don't think i realized how valuable that was; i was totally prepared to see it as a pain in the ass. how many things change you so big, but are also joyful, and involve a remarkably palatable satisfaction-to-pain ratio? when i think of things that arrived one day and large-scale changed me, the vast majority of them are negative. there are a few good ones--meeting the monkey--and some that are really thoroughly mixed--deciding to be an actor--but lots of them involve mistakes and misfortunes. the kind of thing where maybe you manage to be grateful later, but you're not quite sure you'd repeat it if given the choice, no matter how great you turned out. this is different. this is me getting re-made by good feelings.
sometimes i want to write a thousand notes and hide them all over your life, little child: in case you ever forget, even for a minute, i love you as much as i have, as much as i can.
now, it feels more like: you are a kid. and there are parts of this i want like mad to remember. you have started laughing in a whole new way. all of you is involved. laughing just used to be something you could do, and now i can tell you do it for the same reason we do it: you want it because it feels so good.
i was telling someone a few days ago that one of the reasons this time feels so precious is that this is never an uncomplicated relationship, the one between parent and child. i mean, i had a dream last night that my mother and i were beating each other up, true story. but for you, for now, it's relatively simple. you've achieved the impossible through lack of trying. there is just me, and there is just you, and i make the world turn, and you are delighted every time i walk into the room. it isn't just adolescence that's going to break this; you'll start talking and being your own guy and that's what it's all about, but this simplicity will be over. and there's no moving backwards to revisit it later. you're only growing in one direction. like my friend bdon says, time moves forward (it's the punchline to a joke i won't re-tell here, not a dumb commonplace). life gets complicated.
i hope that one of the recompenses for this is that i get a little more uninterrupted sleep.
i feel like i should thank you for giving me this. you, as in the baby. you-the-baby. the baby gives you change, change from without that doesn't (or hasn't for me, thank god) involve catastrophic loss or . . . or whatever. i don't think i realized how valuable that was; i was totally prepared to see it as a pain in the ass. how many things change you so big, but are also joyful, and involve a remarkably palatable satisfaction-to-pain ratio? when i think of things that arrived one day and large-scale changed me, the vast majority of them are negative. there are a few good ones--meeting the monkey--and some that are really thoroughly mixed--deciding to be an actor--but lots of them involve mistakes and misfortunes. the kind of thing where maybe you manage to be grateful later, but you're not quite sure you'd repeat it if given the choice, no matter how great you turned out. this is different. this is me getting re-made by good feelings.
sometimes i want to write a thousand notes and hide them all over your life, little child: in case you ever forget, even for a minute, i love you as much as i have, as much as i can.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
six months.
oh, baby.
i put this off because i'm having such a wonderful time living with you in the moment, whatever that means. for once, i feel like maybe i don't need to transform everything immediately into a narrative.
still, though, how will i remember some of this if i don't make notes? that you are great company. you tiny person, with your one-eighth tooth and your saucy, joyful grin. you have more hair now, but only on some places on your head. (kind of the places where your dad still has more hair, really.) you have his giant roast beef feet, still, and now his very slight cleft chin. hint-of-butt chin. you smile like him sometimes, with the crooked smile, but now a little more often do a big open mouth grin that he says is mine. you've started curling your tiny baby tongue to the left and poking it out of your mouth while you smile, while you stare. you blow raspberries all the time, full on with saliva showers. i tell you that you sound like a baby elephant. yesterday i discovered the first reliable all-verbal laugh cue: my terrible, terrible crazy wide french accent. and, strangely, the thing i say to make you crack up: AH WEEL DO EET . . . TODAY! i will do it today. yep.
you are unbelievable. your head still smells so good, but different. you look like you're growing up, like tomorrow you're going to ask us for a cheeseburger and a harry potter novel. you started crawling in the last few days. you were sort of . . . ooching around, and now, even though it isn't the standard one-two-three-four, you're really motoring around, and all four limbs are roughly taking turns. we have to talk tomorrow about baby proofing. or getting you some kind of baby-run. a corral. something.
listen. i love you. i knew i would, but i thought it would be a more one way street. i thought i'd just love you, and didn't realize about the . . . the you being good company, and how you make me happy when you laugh, and not even because i "did it," because i made you laugh, but because you are kind of a nice person to spend time with. sure, sometimes you're kind of a jerk (LIKE, GO TO BED, BABY. TAKE AN MFing NAP.). but most of the time: you are really delightful. you are just wholesome goodness. we adore you.
