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I had a very nice morning with Dag . . . The two of us walked out of the neighborhood and around the soccer fields. Actually, I handled most of the walking, but he did his little chimp-walk (elbows out, hands up) for about a block and a half. At the park, I tried some pull-ups with Dag strapped to my chest and was happy to find that I’m not completely middle-aged yet, despite the predictions of my friend Max. My cousin Amy, however, observed that even in the airport/homecoming pictures, I no longer look like a globetrotting Bohemian but like a dad, which at one point in my life I would have taken for a great insult but right now makes me feel quietly happy. Amy is a great woman –and the source of the flowers beside Shasta and Dagim, above.
Today I slipped out while Dagim was sleeping –I caffeinated myself and faxed some papers to work so Dagim could be added to our insurance, and then, driving home, I started crying with happiness.
These pictures are from the first twenty-four hours, back in Ethiopia.
A few hours to go –our friends Jim and Steven coming by soon and then we’ll all go to breakfast and the airport together. I’m heading to the gym in a few minutes –I want to exhaust myself before this long day of sitting. I put VAMPIRE WEEKEND on my iPod (recommended by Jana ) so that I can have some new and happy music for the next few hours –and, so, years from now, I can put this album on and remember this entire week).
Yesterday, my last day at work for a while (I’m taking five weeks off), I was a little sad because I wasn’t going to be handing out cigars or anything as I became a father –so I stopped and bought some doughnuts, brought them in. And then at noon, we had a staff meeting and all my co-workers, it turned out, had baked a cake and gotten me a box of blue, bubble gum cigars, and they all wished us well . . . I came home and found many wonderful emails (even one from Joan and Nate!), got a phone call or two, looked at the piles of baby toys that Yiums and Fishers and other people have given us –I thought about different babies I’ve known and the baby I was– and I remembered my Uncle Thom, standing in a Texas restaurant before he died, as he described his own father, my grandfather whom I never met– and I don’t feel hysterical, but I do feel full of emotion. I feel my brain stretched between here and Africa, and I open my eyes in France and Singapore (I’m drinking tea with Sid and Nicola and their wonderful children on their dark bed)(and I’ve never been to Singapore but I know that Tony and Althea are there and so I feel like I am too) and I think about my parents smiling this Thursday when they came up and got Tristan, my little dog-brother, and I think about all the popcorn my dad has made me and all the little books my mother read me– and I think: I’ve got to get on that plane soon, before I fall apart.
Thank you to everyone.
Good luck to Jennifer and Jody.
C
