Dear Ezra: Month One

Dear Ezra,

I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that you’re one month old today. How can that be? Have you ever heard someone say “Kids grow up so fast” and rolled your eyes at its triteness? Guess what. Also INCREDIBLY TRUE.

This last month has been nothing short of wondrous. How lucky am I that I get to spend hours every day holding you in my arms and, when the mood strikes you, watching you look back at me? There aren’t enough three-footed rabbits in the world to tell you how lucky. And your mother — she’s more than over the moon. She’s over Jupiter’s moons. We are in awe at your mere existence.

I struggle to decide which is my favorite part of you. You get probably the most attention for your handsome shock of hair. It is undeniably impressive. We have no idea where it came from, as we were both thin up top as infants. We pray that it doesn’t fall out, and only thickens and grows and makes you into someone even handsomer than you already are. You also get a lot of love for your spindly fingers and toes. We are told they are massive. I think my favorite, at least at this moment, has to be your charming little ears, with their little tufts of monkey fuzz. I nibble at them every chance I get.

In the last few days we’ve discovered this trick: Mom and I hold you up in the mirror and stare, awesomely, at the family that looks back at us. It never fails to blow our minds. Your look is always serene. To you, this is all there has ever been. Your parents’ looks, meanwhile, are something like a cross between canary-eating cat and planet-discovering astrophysicist. We got away with something world-changing here, and somehow we got to name it and take it home with us and call it our own.

Ezra, if the rest of your life compares at all to your first four weeks, you are an insanely lucky man. You spend almost every day being adored and cuddled by the community of relatives and friends who love you. You’re never more than a grunt away from an endless supply of food. Every three hours you are awarded an hour’s suckling at your favorite breast. You’ve spent your free time in parks and the beach, occasionally in the the nude, greeted only with smiles and laughter. In fact, you must not even be familiar with the frown, as every face you’ve ever stared into you’ve lit up with a smile.

We’ve been careful from the beginning to avoid any expectations about shaping you. We know the best we can do is act true to our own values and hope we inspire you. This first month, we introduced you to your first set of friends. They’re an awesome bunch. Most of them are a bit older than you, though I suspect with a lucky few you’ll find a kinship, despite the difference in years. I’m already hungry for the days when they’ll teach you the things your mom and dad dare not to. I have my suspicions about which lessons will come from whom.

Those days will come soon enough; I’m still relishing these. These days of watching you mature right before us, when every baby step is, for you, something giant. These days of a cuteness so immense we want to bottle it up and use it to cure the world of all its ills. These days of oh-you’re-so-close-but-not-quite-smiling-for-real. These days of figuring out what it means to be a family.

One lovely month down, countless more to go.

Love,
Papa

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