Aging Parent

Yesterday Danine and I called in a baby sitter for the first time while we went out to a movie together. It was quite an emotional movie and afterwards I just wanted to get home to Emily. When I got home she was very glad to see us and she collapsed in my arms and laid on my chest when I laid down on the living room floor. We put her to bed and put on the PBS saturday night movie, which was Big, the Tom Hanks movie. No commercials, quality programming. It struck me though that Josh Baskin was a 13 year old, about my age when the movie came out (15, actually) and now I was the age of the Big Josh Baskin. Well, that's about as much emotion as a man can take in one day. How dear children are, and our childhood is, made me think of aging in a such a new light. I think of those old couples Danine and I would see out at restraunts, nothing to say to one another. I used to think perhaps they are boring, or maybe out of love. Now with a child and knowing how I felt being away for just a few hours and how difficult it was to think about anything else or talk for want of that subject (which we promised we would not discuss while we were out) now I imagine something different. That old, quiet couple is stuck in the heartache of children grown up and out, and childhood past and gone, and the pain and suddenness of it stuns even a great love and a busy and active mind.

This morning I spent much of the time plaing with Emily. Out in the yard, in the living room. She spent the time picking up her Bumbo chair and hoisint it around a few steps, the same with a wicker basket. I feld her upside down by her feet and she laughed as I swept her fingers back and forth over the cushion under her. I sat down to watch Wimbledon and as I did she laid on her back and discovered she could inch her way along the floor and this was enormous fun. I laughed as hard as I have in weeks, and I think the last time was something else she had figured out, new and exciting, and fun. She is discovering her body and her strength and is enjoying how she can find new ways to band and move and put her will onto the world around her. Of course, the best thing still is, and hopefully for a good long time will remain, siezing daddy's fingers and holding them as suppots while running everywhere she wants to go.

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