Just Add Fuel

In the fall of 1995 I held, for the first time, the first child of my circle of friends. It was the first time as an adult I held a baby, and I wept. He was just a few days old and was yellow with jaundice after a traumatic birth. Everything about him was astounding to me, to think that he'd been inside one of my friends - my smallest friend, in fact - and that small as he was that day, he was going to grow up to be bigger than I was. That everything that was his body and would ever be his body was already inside him, installed at the factory, so to speak.

He was the first (and the only, for a several years) of the next generation. Suddenly, I was projecting myself and my friends way into the future.

This photo is from almost two and half years ago but it's the most recent electronic-format photo I have:



Today I attended a baby shower for Princess Word of Thunder's daughter Pia. I always feel like I have to elaborate that Pia is no kid; my age is exactly halfway between hers and her mother's. Pia was 16 when we met, and I've always seen her as adult, or almost an adult; she seemed really together for a teenager, especially compared to me at that age.

After most of the people had left the party, Pia put up her feet and entertained us with belly bounces while Baby was squirming around in there, or whatever it is that babies do before they are born. Everything that this child is going to be is already there... Taking me back to where I was in 1995.

The picture below is from nine weeks ago, but none of the pictures I took today show her standing up with her belly out. Pia said that these days, it takes ten and a half sheets of toilet paper to wrap around her body (apparently TP squares are some standard pregnant-belly measurement, because it came up in a bay shower game too).



The first child of the next next generation is going to arrive in five weeks or so. Now I'm projecting myself and my friends way, way into the future.

Loops of Love

I just wrote about family and I feel compelled to write about family again.

I have been lucky to be taken into not one but two families with children young enough to not remember a time when they didn't know me. I love them, they love me, and we create feedback loops of love.

I met Words of Thunder when her children were 16, six and half, and three and half. The first time I drove up to their house in the woods, Boy was standing on the parking pad and yelled, "She's here!" running inside to spread the news. I was welcomed by a child who was apparently disposed to love me even though we hadn't met yet.

Of course, I was disposed to love him, and Bug, and Pia. It's hard not to love children who love you, who show you when they are brave enough to ride a bike down a hill, who ask you for help with the silent "e," who ask you whether they should eat lunch before they have another popsicle.



The first time I met TL's children TL and I had planned to go for coffee and bring the kids with us (Zocalo has a children's play area). By the time I got to her house, TL's husband had come home and agreed to keep Lizard and Batman with himwhile we went for coffee break. The children were very upset by the change of plans, and while trying to placate them I said to Lizard, "You can come next time."

Every time I came pick up TL for the meeting, which doesn't even start until after their bedtime, Lizard would say accusingly, "This is next time!" Finally we all went for coffee (well, the kids had hot chocolates), and I landed firmly in Lizard's good graces. Lizard is my best four year old friend. When I walk in the door Lizard rushes me with a hug around the waist, cheering my name, and no matter what kind of mood I've been in, I feel like a queen because Lizard loves me.