Epiphanies From A Newbie Parent

What does one say for three month old brats? The ones that make you get up at two in the night with a near-silent whimper, twist and turn their arms and feet to signal the ending of an enterprising dream, and then unleash the deadliest weapon of mass meltdown possible: the smile. What do you do with these little critters? Those that have woken up at two and smiled at you and effortlessly extracted a smile back despite all your exhaustion; those that then flail their arms and legs in joyous celebration.

How does one outwit these master manipulators? Those that know that the expressions on their face and the sound of their crying are signals their caretakers can’t ignore and use that to the maximum effect. Those that walk you around the house for hours at a stretch while leading you to believe that you are the ones walking them. Those that are leading you to a state of stability and focus while you spend hours servicing their needs.

What do you with these master magicians? The ones that make you speak in a garbled language you never knew before, the ones who have you thinking of them through the day, the one who want to make you get back home in the evening as soon as possible, the ones who turn your baby-agnostic self to a child-loving persona.

What do you teach these masterful teachers? Those that have the confidence to completely submit themselves to you. Their minds are clear, their faith is total, and when one rests on your chest with his arms stretched finding the warmest reaches of your embrace and feet curled up like a little ball as he wriggles his head to find a spot of total comfort, you know that it is you who needs to learn to repay their faith. The ones who are so effortlessly intimate with you when you hold them, that you find yourself letting your guard down as the layers that we build to survive adult life simply peel off in the steady gaze of those truthful eyes.

What do you do with them indeed? Cherish them, count your blessings and enjoy the ride.

Rear Window

The crescent moon hides more than it reveals. Above the glistening arc lies a veil of secrecy. The arc stretched one corner of his eye to the other as he peered at it through the telescope. As promised, the last of the month had brought with it clear skies. It was balancing the books, making up for the obfuscations that cloud covers brought, often hiding the source of lightning as it struck from up above.

A chance encounter had got him invited to this party. His offer of help to shift a sofa two flights up in a building across him had landed him a bottle of beer in his hand and five introductions as he sifted through the kitschy music blaring out of a refurbished CD player. It was a world away from his plush penthouse just across the road, and he wondered again why he was there. It wasn’t his scene, it wasn’t, he guiltily thought, in his class. But the novelty of it all had been too much to resist, as was the faux-urbane charm of the couple he was helping. Why, they were also into astronomy, those geeks.

Bored with the luminescence of the moon, he drifted across the sky identifying the few constellations he could name. Just then, a drunk reveler stumbled into him pushing his elbow and shaking the telescope. He spent some time wiping the spilt beer of his coat and decided to assess the displacement of the fine-tuned instrument. His eyes met a strange sight at the other end of that lens. A building that looked familiar. His own. A terrace that he recognized. His own. Two figures clad in black climbing down the pipes from that terrace with contents of a broken safe. His own. A sickening feeling overwhelmed him as the CIO of a Fortune 500 company stared at his company secrets going down the drain, literally. Beware of strangers bearing gifts of free beer!