New Eyes

You know when you come across something in a book that makes you feel that the writer has crept into your mind, taken your formless thoughts, and molded them into something clear and true? And you get that little tingle of reader-joy and some bigger sense of communion with this writer and, perhaps, the entire human race or a sub-section thereof? I came across a poem by Sharon Olds recently that gave me that feeling:

The New Stranger

I learned to croon to you,

to cry and moan, and all this time

you were getting your first looks at earth, it was

you, and I did not know you, I was not

there to greet you, I didn't exist

until you smiled at me, and in your

brilliant loam-colored iris I saw,

tiny as an embryo,

your mother smile.

This poem made me think of a book I read a while back that reflected on the other end of life: Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, lent to us by Mark's parents. She talks about how after her husband's death of a heart attack, suddenly she sees herself as an old woman and realizes that her husband, who had known her since she was a young woman, was a keeper of that younger image of herself. Once he is gone, that image is gone too. It made me think a lot about how the very existence of certain of our selves are guarded and kept by the ones we are bound to by love and time.

Which, of course, brings me back to our Arlo -- our new set of eyes. Mark and I were talking the other day about how to him, "Maggie" and "Mark" (aka mom and dad) start now. Oh, he'll see pictures and hear stories of our life before him, but they'll seem like hazy and slightly boring fictions. But then, when he starts remembering things, then his life, my life, Mark's life, and our joint, intertwined lives will really begin. And when we see ourselves through his eyes, as we already do, we'll feel the excitement of a full and unknown life spread out before us. Maybe this is what that 70-something Indian woman had in mind.

Meanwhile, we're busy recording and remembering our little enigma-son as he is now so that when he's older he'll be able to marvel over how small he once was and laugh with us about the perfect comic timing of his flatulence. Maybe sometimes he'll feel like we still see him as a kid. And maybe sometimes he won't mind that.