Enlightened Librarian: Life Here

The Ewan files 7: 1 year on earth · Feb 8, 11:10 PM

In approximately two hours, our son will commence his 366th day in the external world. Much more has happened than I have been able to keep up with in words, relying on some photos to capture changes and to do memory’s heavy lifting.

Every day he is able to gather more strands of himself and gain clarification of his personality. Flat planes have become shapes, and shapes have become objects, and objects have taken on roles as instruments and repositories of other objects. He takes pleasure in the expanding orbits of what is familiar, and he delights in his abilities, many of which involve various talents for making noises with things. Moving his arm back and forth can mean excitement, frustration, music or a ceiling fan. His thoughts involve shifting categories, and the fluid transfer of meaning from face to face. At five months, his personality began to take up a whole room in sheer, formidable baby-presence. Now he has gained the early stature and poise of toddlerdom and boyhood. He has spent nights away wiring himself for the coming epochs of walking and speech. There is no stopping him.

* * *

The Ewan files 5 · May 6, 09:53 PM

Almost three months. His smiles are wired in, and he’s nearly reached a coordinated laugh.

He is a tiny engine of desire and absorption. His ribs feel like the bones of a large bird. He can be coy, and he can thrash and be lost. He has begun to shed the clothes of his younger self. I wonder if, like mine did, his legs hurt when he grows.

When he was born he already yawned like an old man. He used to have perpetual hiccups, and now he speaks in Finnish vowels. Give and take, give and take. These are the early patterns issuing like thrumming radio frequencies from the deepest rock of his life. The unknowable core.

* * *

The Ewan files 4: Milk and circuses · Mar 8, 11:18 PM

Our son is one month old today. He has come to know us, and know what it is to be abandoned for minutes at a time. He is perfecting his intensity of seeing. My wife says he has begun to learn how to smile, which comes fleetingly when the mobile over his crib is wound up. The barns and cows circle each other in stately manner, and a bit of lopsided Brahms enters the room.

* * *

The Ewan files 3 · Feb 15, 09:33 PM

A good night, and then a bad night. In the light, in the moments between drinking and sleeping, our son will lie quietly and look. In the dark he fills with inscrutable desires, hurts and fears. Alienation tears at his insides until he can suck and become calm. He is untethered from his former home and is unsure where he is, and who we are.

But he meets our eyes more and more now. We hang on.

* * *

The Ewan Files 2 · Feb 12, 11:56 PM

Almost 96 hours of life. Light and dark have begun to take on form, and he can see our faces, which are no longer undifferentiated from the rest of the world. He’s a starer. He will look and frown, as though working on a math problem. Then a flash of ‘aw shucks,’ or a vaudville ‘yikes!’ Facial weather of a boy not yet a week old.

I have seen all time and space
dissolve into a tiny face.

* * *