Create

By the way, if you are wondering why I am now only including one word title lines, it is because if I include more than one, the browers or whatever this is converts the words into question marks. So I might have Love ??? ????? in a title line.

It is amazing how little I understand the mechanism I am using here.

I am off to pick up Ari soon from daycare & he and I will head down to RI tonight or tomorrow for Thanksgiving. I am sad we won't be with Rachel & Robbie & Adam & Aiko & Sarah & Stewart and the pack o' chillen that will be celebrating in Manhattan. I'll miss them, but we at least saw each other over Daddy's 80th birthday, so I at least laid eyes on the kids and held them in my arms (except O & E of course).

It was amazing to be staying in the Big House. There is something about opening up the curtains to THAT view--it is heart-piercing. And yet and yet--all of my yearning and longing, these days, seems to be wrapped up in that little person who I write about. It is as if all the rest merely dances around me--terribly important but not penetrating in the way it once did.

Today a former student brought her son and her 6 month old into the place where I intern now. The children were gorgeous, of course, and her little baby girl just nestled right up to me--quite literally a bundle of joy as she batted at my face and chuckled, pleased with herself for being able to grab my hair. Ai, yi, that feeling of baby-ness in my arms. And she so petite, too, unlike the huge hunk of baby that was Ari at that age. There is a feeling of gratification in holding a baby that is unlike any other sensation on the planet, may I live a hundred years and do all sorts of sensational, unlikely things.

I remember when my cousin's Dad, of blessed memory, saw me holding her sister's gorgeous first born. I was just holding him, relishing his weight on my chest, refusing to relinquish him to any of his other worshippers. And he said to me, "You need one of those for your own." It was one of those comments that hurts a little and yet lodges somewhere. I thought, yes, I do need one of those for me own. No matter what it takes.

I don't even want to outdo that rapture. And I do have one of my own now. Thank you, Walter.