The Fire Tribe

Abe,
Last week your Aunt Betty gave you a bunch of tall sticks and some twine. We added a sheet and some clothes pins and you had your first tipi. Shortly after it was done, you had toys and favorite catalogs tucked away in there. It's a cozy pad.

The butterfly exhibit at the Nature Center has come to a close. We visited at least four times and even brought your cousins there. This last time, the owls were out in the middle of the day, looking imperiously around. You and your Mama watched them through the fence. I love how you identify them. “Owl-whoo-whoo,” you say, name and sound linked as a single concept. You do that with movement too, so that when you say,”Coloring,” you are scribbling in air. It's such a complete language.

Here we are, the trio.

Pa-

Abe,
The ominous chug-a-chug-a of my old diesel Benz is bound to wake you, rumbling as it does, just below your bedroom window. But you always wake happy. Many days, the last thing I see before I back out of the driveway is you smiling down from the window. Makes for a good day.
Pa-

Friends in the UK sent us this hat of the Arsenal football club. You point and say “wheel” when you look at the cannon.

Abraham,
You and your Mom visited Rhode Island just after the fourth of July. Your Dad got around to posting it on the blog in the middle of August. These are pictures sent by Carol of your visit with your Grandpa A. You played with eels and then set them free in the breakwater near Weekapaug Pond. You found crabs in the rocks and had a picnic on the beach. I am sorry that I missed it all.

Abraham,
Midnight. You are sleepless. Done crying now, you are still too alert for the middle of the night. I sing you songs.
I tell you to think about something else. We recall a recent trip to Atlanta. We talk in real darkness because you are fascinated by how light moves. Son of a photographer. Son of a painter.
“Remember when we went to the Georgia Aquarium? Do you remember what we saw?”
“Fish,” you reply, signed, a hand waving like a salmon swimming towards the sky.
“It was beautiful, wasn't it?”
“Beautiful,” signed, hand circling the face twice for emphasis.
“We saw fish that swam as fast as rockets.”
“Rocket,” hand goes up. “Woosh,” sounds at blast off.
“Some as big as a table.”
“Table,” hands tap each other gently, like saying, “There, there.”
“Flat, silver ones that looked like the moon.”
I expect you to gesture to the moon, a circle high over your head, but you remain quiet.
“Do you want to lay down?”
“Sleep,” signed, one hand pressing your cheek, everything about sleep in one movement.
We lay down, on our backs, looking up at where the ceiling must be.
After a few minutes, you roll over. With your knees under your belly and your face resting on the mattress, you fall asleep. My hand on your back feels the electricity subside.
I lay in the dark for a while longer, fish moving like rockets in my memory.

Pa-

Abraham,
You are walking now. Your Mom and I stand at opposite ends of the kitchen and encourage you to walk-trundle-tumble between us, back and forth. Every trip you make across that floor aches in me. How long I have waited for for this, to see you walking, standing tall and ready on your own sweet feet.

I used to sing this song to you at night when you couldn't sleep. I never wrote another verse, I just kept singing this one over and over, a little prayer for your feet:

I roar like a lion,
Everyday I keep on trying
I will walk and I will run
I will meet you on the sun.

We have just returned from a trip to Atlanta, to get treatment for your club feet. These trips are like minor earthquakes. There are days of preparations, with menus contemplated, revised, and then executed with great care. The car overflows with bags, snacks, toys and makeshift bedding on loan from friends. In hotel rooms we rig up a tent for you, hung from bad paintings bolted to the wall. We have a very strict schedule of meals and naps all organized around a series of appointments.

Your feet are good. Now that you are walking in braces, you are doing a lot to make things right. Your Mom and I spend time everyday massaging and moving your feet. This last trip to Atlanta taught us new things to do to help your stride and joint flexion. We know about bones in the foot and myofascial release. We are all doing better with this path than the last.

Once we were done with treatment, we went to the Georgia Aquarium. Kids on their spring vacation from school made the walls vibrate. You rode on our backs and shoulders and took everything in. You made the sign for “fish” over and over again, like waving to everyone. There was space enough for you get down on the floor and explore at the coral reef tank, with shark infested waves breaking over our heads. Every fish you saw was more beautiful than the last.

That night we found delicious Thai food, sadly missing since leaving Portland. You had some of my curry and flirted with the waitresses, earning yourself a free scoop of coconut ice cream. Such sweets are generally frowned upon by the management, but you got to have a few spoonfuls, with some sticky rice and mango. This turned out to be the best night of sleep any of us have had since the day you were born.

Pa-

Abraham,
Today, while your Mom was out, you and I walked the lake. We stalked ducks, startled squirrels and and studied the big excavators they have there, churning over the mud to fix a water line. Back home, we hung out in the hammock. The rabbits have returned to the yard, bigger and more cautious than last spring. “Ra-ra,” you said. All your favorite words are repeated syllables. They are my favorite words as well. While I made dinner you played in the backyard, relocating pebbles and knocking over the mop. We ate together, sharing frozen peas. You ate rice with your fingers and used two spoons to flip it around your tray. Before bed, your Mom and I read stories with you. There's a bedtime routine called “getting the giggles out.” Tonight I got you laughing by reading “My Aunt Came Back,” in a screechy voice with a weird chuckle at the end. You made me read it three times. Yesterday you stood up on your own for the first time.

We washed up here one year ago today. Back in the days before we sailed over the country I wrote in my journal “Today I saw K. and Abe together and wanted desperately to join my family. They are both so beautiful and strong and robust…” My heart ached and my body was so tired of living it refused food and water.

Those days are a long time gone.

Here we are. Every day is rich and full. Every day is a wonder.

Pa-

Abe,
I'm sorry that I do not put more here for you as the days rocket past. Living doesn't leave much time for reporting on living. These days you are obsessed with trucks and heavy equipment of all sorts, particularly excavators, bulldozers and front-loaders. You have all the construction sites around town mapped out and will tell us when we are approaching a place where construction is being done, or has been done, since you developed this fascination with earth moving. You will point to a vacant lot and make a sign and mechanical noise. We respond, “That's right, we did see a backhoe parked here last month, didn't we?” Happily, it's not all machinery; you do the same when we go past duck ponds too. After Mama and Dada, 'duck' was your first truly recognizable word.

Pa-