Saturday, June 11, 2005

Early Late Night

It's ten til one in the morning and just moments ago I watched Franklin close his eyes as he drifted to sleep. He'll be six months old next Wednesday, and I still can't get over the magic feeling I get when I see him cross the threshold into Sleepytown. I don't see this every day, sometimes he just nods off while being fed and then Maggie puts him in the crib with his Snoopy doll and one of his security blankets.


Silly person that I am, I can't help but wonder if there is something going on. I've felt the same sense of awe when I pass under a streetlight and it switches on, or I glance up at the McDonald's sign and it lights up. It was about the same time that motion sensor lights were being introduced that I began to notice the street lamp in the parking lot of my apartment in Greensboro, NC winking at me when I walked up. I think someone told me about motion sensors and I realized I wasn't supernatural.

Tonight I got up to twist the music box and listened to part of the chorus of "The Teddy Bear's Picnic" about 12 times. I glanced over at him, through the crib railing and caught his eye. I winked at him, and he winked back. After I winked a second time, he slowly closed his eyes, and was gone. Just like that. Five minutes of protest, and now...silence. The electric fan's plastic blades slicing through the air and an occasional drop of water are the only sounds to be heard apart from the keyboard's soft clicks and the low whir of the air conditioning. He'll kick in a few minutes and turn himself around in the crib first 90, then 180 degrees. Come morning he'll be all discombobulated. Just like his daddy.

We had story time before bed tonight. First we listened to an old Rush album (it's Friday and I gave him a break from the routine Beatle/Zappa rotation), then Peter Gabriel's Passion as I told him what his first haircut was going to be like. Still no idea when that will be, but he's getting a thicker head of hair...well, more hair anyway. Then I told him the story about how his Dad invented Dragon Boat Festival. He seemed to enjoy that one a lot because during the telling he kept grabbing my currently beardless cheeks and squeezing them.

He's a singer. He's got good sustain on the high notes and he lets me harmonize with him. He hasn't started singing along with the music, but I'm preparing Abbey Road and Sheik Yerbouti for when he's up to it.

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