Tuesday, March 22, 2011

A Man is Born

The baby came in about two and a half months ago.  He's a man-child, a new grandson.  When I am with him, I get flashes of my grandfather William and my father, Jack.  I asked him one day if we knew each other....if he was perhaps my grandfather.  He threw his head back, wide open baby mouth, and laughed a man's laugh.  When his head came back 'round, he was a baby again, sweet, gurgley, fat, pure.....

It's evening now.  This day was spent in his company, all day, 11 hours.....what a deep joy and deeper question it is to be with him, Gavin, 'Alert Hawk'.  When my daughter, his mother, came home, we shared some wine, and she mentioned a recurring dream she has had about this baby-man.  In the dream, he is an old man; he sleeps in a bed next to hers, and she cares for him, feeds him old man food, like baby food.  She loves him deeply, this old man.  When she awakens, her baby boy is sleeping close to her.  He coos in his slumber, gone to the world.  When he awakens, she remembers her dream, remembers the old man whom she loved and cared for.  She wonders about agelessness, about this relationship, soul to soul. 

When I am with him, I feel we are equals, he is just stuck in this infantile body.  He wants to get his legs under him and start working, start running, telling me the jokes he has saved from the time he was the old man, burst his lore out onto this plane with all the power of the rising Sun, and when he does, I will listen like I've never listened to any human before.  This mystery of a man, this roly baby with the River running in his direct gaze, sun dancing on the ripples of his laugh....