Wednesday, December 28, 2005

This is life ...

German school is over for now … more will come later but I have a few trips to New York to take care of and life things to arrange so I will cope with the German skills I have thus far acquired. I have just about gotten hold of how to get around this new city without spending far too much for things I didn’t really want. Cases in point from recent excursions: “I just want one filet of fish not a whole plate with side offerings and things” (7Euro) … “I would like a child’s serving of soup” not the 3Euro90 version. I have figured out that Landbrot is something with which to fill holes in barn walls and not a breakfast food and I have made friends with my local butcher and wine merchant. So with those vital matters put to rest I can and have placed my focus squarely on HH.

This is what life becomes when a child enters your life and you have the time to pay attention.
It isn’t that complicated really … life. It’s about listening a good bit of the time, to those around you who matter most, your lover, wife, other … your son in my case. Listening to him and spending time being with him, going to the market, letting him push the shopping cart around the store, complying when he asks me to sit with him and play airport. There are not that many days in his young life when he will actually care about whether I sit with him or not. Soon enough his focus will be drawn outward, toward friends his age, toward people with whom he can share the experience of growing up. With Papa it is not a level field. Papa is always the arbiter of what can or can’t be eaten, drunk, felt, heard or touched. It dawned on me not long ago, that I had better gather these moments … engage as many of my senses as possible in every experience we encounter together. This is my life. I have moved slowly but directly from the world of cameras and schedules and makeup trailers and the famous and semi-famous who populate popular culture, to the care and feeding of His Holiness, the little man who comes running each morning from his room, soft eyed and smelling so fresh and warm that it is all I can do not to gobble him up. God but I am happy with him in my life … I am also relieved in a strange way, that I have tasted as much of the world as I have, because I would surely miss it more … had I never known it’s full flavor.