Photo by K. Rajendran at Lake Michigan
My son Nooa turned two yesterday. This is not a remarkable thing. After all, time passes us by with such ease and fortitude, with nothing to hinder its intent. What is truly compelling is the way in which time changes shapes and becomes us. One day we look at someone we love and see that they are completely different than the day before. This is the magic of parenthood... seeing how time performs the greatest slight of hand in the words, gestures, and features of our children.
What lies beyond this day for Nooa is, I can only hope, a lifetime of discovery and grand experience. So far he has the appetite for it. I watch my children as they interact with the objects and people around them on our walks each day. They move through this urban landscape on foot, on scooter, by train, as though it is their own, and it is. I'm often reminded of a book I read a couple of years ago by Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York, about (as the book cover suggests) "...a family taking root in the unlikeliest patch of earth." He refers to the city as representing a kind of childlike hope... "waiting for something big to happen." I love this notion. Yesterday, we took a water taxi from Michigan Avenue to the river's edge at Chinatown. On this journey, I stared at the buildings and barriers and renewed architecture jutting up against the river and couldn't help but think of all the exciting possibilities this city had yet to realize. As we disembarked from the taxi in Chinatown, we entered into a beautiful park on the river. Here children were fishing, playing in the playground, running along its paths; a veritable oasis in the midst of old industry and the web of expressways.
In essence, time is certainly the greatest of gifts in the way that it keeps bringing us people, opportunities, and new ways of inventing ourselves and our surroundings. And in the most basic of ways, the words and phrases Nooa discovers and sings or exclaims with joy every day are a testament to what lies beyond. Uncovering and understanding. A whole world of syllables and sounds just waiting to be gobbled up and applied to that which he sees.
Happy birthday, Nooa.