Some Assembly Required (27 page)

One year old already. I can’t really get my mind around this. It passed in many paces and timbres, like an opera. I got up to feed the dogs and the kitty, and felt like hell with jet lag. I made a list in my head of all the things I had to do: find enough forks for twenty, remember where I put the festive plates and napkins with cupcakes on them, pick up the wreckage Jax and his slovenly no-goodnik parents had left behind, sneak in a short granny nap.

Sam, Amy, and Jax came over early, before the party. People weren’t coming till five. Jax chattered away about arrangements. He definitely knows what’s he saying now—he has laid out certain work for himself to do, and he talks away, as you should know about it all, because his work and discoveries are so fascinating. The only actual words are “Dada,” “Mama,” “Nana,” a generalized
d
sound for dog, “duhhy,” and for the kitty cat, “ditty dah.” Yet he’s very assured, no longer simply playing with sounds, but expressing himself. He’s grown from a helpless newborn to an accomplished and complex human being who is days away from walking. He’s grown me, too: grandchildren grow you. With your own child, you’re fixated on the foreground, trying to keep the child safe and alive. But with a grandchild, you can be in softer focus, you can see
beyond the anxious foreground. Jax is absolutely nutty, like the rest of us, fluent, and fluid like a stream, with lightness, richness, silkiness, stones: echoes, undertones, overtones, melodies, whining, burbling; cool water flowing, pinging, and roaring past pebbles and plants and its own clear self.

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Thank you, Sam and Amy, for letting me tell this story. Thank you, Jake Morrissey, for being the ideal editor and friend. Thank you, Riverhead, especially Anna Jardine, Mih-Ho Cha, Ali Cardia, and Craig Burke. I love all the publicity people, both hardcover and paperback. They make me feel loved and safe. Thank you, St. Andrew Presbyterian Church of Marin City: You are my favorite place in the world.