Wampum

Jonah is spending his time alternating between sophisticated and effective play in several games -- something involving Dora and Boots, rather calmly looking for something (Kezzie's favorite), the every frantic Donald made more so jumping to coins, ahead of giant evil hands, over hot lava and bottomless pits, and past the Dalton Gang, Mr. Incredible and Frozone slicing and icing past the Underminer and all his robots (Sam's favorite) ... and running his eye up and down and up and down the assembled edges of the sound-effect equipped cutlasses Santa the Pyrate Claus abandonded sur le champ a few days past.

The normal and the profoundly different from. The pursuit of the linear. Of the self-similar. The private peyote of the occular cult, sourced again and again and again and again in the near lateral visual field.

At dawn when he woke up and started bouncing I snuggled him up and recited his birthing story. The doctor coming late and my catching him, which after three prior attempts I managed without much thought or concern. Mom recited the Dad fainting part (comedy from the peritoneal tear repair department), and Jonah replied by spelling out s-e-v-e-n and snuggling back. I didn't go on to the harder part. The hours later when respiration began to fail, the trip to the NICU, learning to change diapers and onesies through the ports of an incubator, through an octopus of wires and tubes, learning to decode the color and sound of distal (O₂) and central (cardiac function) monitors, learning the routine of neo-natal nursing, until it all just faded and we were ... unremarkable gowned parents, always present, moving every other day from the central hot zone to the 2nd bank, then up against the wall, and then ... free.

We spent New Year's Eve drinking sparkling cider in the NICU rocking Jonah and watching the rising edge of the clock cross Japan and Asia and Europe, as the epoch ending "y2k bug" ... manifested as overblown nothingness.

When we returned with our new baby to Grace and Sam ... Joe asked me if I knew that Sam couldn't hear. And our voyage into the uncharted seas and undiscovered lands of autism began.

I think Mario Kart and whatever fell out of the seine is coming back this afternoon from the Santa Barbara fish pier and co-located cash-for-prizes looteries. This evening I'll call my mom and let her know that "that damn Socialist running for Senate somewhere back East" invited me to his swearing in, and to a reception later. She'll get a kick out of that. It's her birthday too.