Four Month Olds
Ellie in NYC
I have met and held and hung with an astounding number of four month olds this month and I think four months old is then new forty. Four month olds are really really into three things: gripping, trying, and being upright. I love how they hold on. I love how already, at this earliest of ages, they want to do what you do—drive, write poetry, wash dishes. I love how they want to stand even though they can’t stand. They can’t even lean. But they do not define themselves, at all, by all what can’t be done. They don’t even know what can’t be done is!! Their freedom is a very dogged one, not at all loose. They remind me a lot of my eighty year old daddy, who looks at me in a similar way: yes, what do you got, what do you know, bring it on, all of it.
I wish, at midlife, when I’m not always as into things as I was (relationship, career, the garden, abdominal strength), when I feel a kind of fading away of all the beautiful wonderful wants—a combination in this of loss and grace—to be more like the baby and the elder, with that fearless face, give it to me, all of it, I’m ready, I’m next.
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