Tainted Milk

Much has transpired in the nearly three months since my last posting. We moved into a bigger house. I quit my job to be a full-time stay-at-home dad. And most significantly, our son has evolved into a little person.

Not that he wasn't a person three months ago. In fact, he was, and is, much more than a person to me. In him is a spirit unpolluted by the world you and I inhabit. In him is a purity as bright and clear as the smoothest glass, a window to a world where bad things don't happen. He doesn't know about the latest suicide bombings in Iraq. Or the poverty and disadvantage that was shoved, necessarily, in our faces during last summer's hurricane season. He doesn't know how many of the world's children go to bed hungry. I don't want to know either, actually.

He also doesn't know how much he inspires me to be a better person. When I look at him I remember that my body and soul were once unpolluted, just as his are now. So I examine how I was raised, how I react to events and experiences, and how, basically, I deal with life. I examine how I can read on cnn.com that 17 people were blown to pieces in Iraq and then switch to comedycentral.com and laugh my head off at clips of the Daily Show. Am I the only one who makes such a disturbing transition so easily? When in life did I stop being affected, moved, saddened and angered by all the badness in our world? I can't change it if I'm numb to it.

Enter my son. My wife and I are everything to him. He is everything to us. When I get down on the world, I look to him to assure me that all is okay.

And he does. He smiles and laughs and wiggles. He lets me look through his window, and when I do, I can't help but smile and laugh and wiggle alongside him.