Two

While we were celebrating my grandson’s second birthday here in Oxford, nineteen children and two teachers were being murdered at their school in Texas. To call it a “shooting” sanitizes it, but I cannot find the right terminology, nor can I get my mind around the fact that it has become the sort of thing that happens in my country with some regularity, and that lawmakers, in particular the Republican ones, have steadfastly refused to take any meaningful action that would render such horror less likely.

Much will have been said and written about this, and I have no insights to add. Now come the ritualistic thoughts and prayers, the nonsensical fervor about the misapplied and out-of-context Second Amendment, the shameful display of loyalty to NRA money over innocent lives. Maybe this time will be different--we keep hearing that--but it’s a hope that grew hollow after Sandy Hook. These are not the thoughts I imagined I’d be having on my grandson’s second birthday.

Let’s shift the scene, then, to that birthday celebration, a small casual gathering of little kids, parents, and family members on the outdoor patio of a corner pub. It was chilly and windy, still wet from a day of hail and rain, and I sat as close as I could to the heating lamps. Despite having had his first full day at nursery, Felix ran around with his friend Alba, exploring all the places we would least want him to be: hiding beneath tables, finding muddy twigs and spider webs in sharp-edged metal cubbies, and scrambling up a spiral ladder staircase with slippery iron steps, proudly standing at the very top, oblivious to his peril. I am grateful for stronger and quicker folks like Monte, who somehow manage to run rescue and interference. I’m much better in contained venues, like rooms with rugs and story books and thick tablets of paper with crayons. I’m even learning to draw tractors.

Felix is a verbal mimic and has learned the word “possibilities”, and that’s how he sees the world. It’s a veritable banquet of possibilities and experiences, and he launches himself into it with relish and abandon. A stroll in the neighborhood means walking on brick walls, touching the rough plastered surfaces of window sills, spying tools and toys in yards and shops. Today a man was operating a vehicle with a lift, and the admiration in Felix’s eyes transformed him into a hero. He let Felix push the button that moved the lift, and they both walked a little taller after that, a couple of competent professionals, making things happen.

To paraphrase Dylan Thomas (in one of my favorite poems, Fern Hill) Felix is “young and easy under the apple boughs, about the lilting house and happy as the grass was green”. He is golden in the heyday of Time’s eyes, honored among bin lorries and famous among the playgrounds and coffee shops and nothing does he know or care of the eventual exit from this childhood grace. 

Of course I worry about aspects of the world that will hurt and disappoint, and the burden of adult knowledge he must one day bear. He was born at the start of the pandemic into a time of Covid and climate change, of war and injustice, of the slaughter of children in a classroom. And thus it always has been: we elders fear for our little ones heading into an unknown as fraught with sorrow as it is lit by joy. I just want Felix to be strong and kind, smart and loved and happy. May his capacity for delight continue throughout his life.

On a more self-absorbed level, I have also been brooding about how I fit into the small part of his life in which he will know me. I am painfully aware of myself as being a visitor, the California grandma, a novelty item, not a regular part of his world. Monte tells me to grow up, stop setting up these insoluble dilemmas and gracefully enjoy the time we have with him. Felix has already reinvigorated my sense of wonder and appreciation, given me new things to marvel at and new ways of seeing the world, and I'll carry this home with me.

I had dared to imagine more than this, geographical realities aside. I wanted to be someone present and real, not just a special occasion. Now I understand that my role will be different, but perhaps not insignificant. I will pour love into him when I am with him, and help him to gain confidence, and leave him with some vague memory of a silver-haired Nonna and ice cream and the smell of leaves and rain; maybe a blackbird song will prompt it, or a certain slant of light, but he will draw upon a reservoir of indefinable joy, a certainty of love, a feeling he can summon up decades from now, source unknown, but firmly planted.