Saturday. Paws together a toddler and his doting uncle stutter-stepped through the park. For the former it was business as usual; he’s never alone. For the latter, father to his own newborn, it was batting practice for the spring to come. Holding hands, bridging four states through touch, they ambled over brick and grass…and played.
I envy Max. The world is his oyster. First born of first borns, at twenty months he remains the “only game in town”, unaware he is positioned as patriarch to yet unborn branches of his family tree.
Perhaps the kid knows. I do sense he gets he’s directing traffic. Who (but a first born) receives a standing ovation for trying on clothing? Or gets high fives for GIVING high fives. Everything is new not only to him, but to the kinfolk as well. There’s a purity to it all, even to the childlike innocence with which adults feel compelled to exult in sometimes just ordinary behavior. (He is NOT, I am reminded, the first child to eat an avocado. THE FIRST BOGART, PERHAPS. but not the first child).
I watch them kvell, enveloping him with bursting hearts. Like I do. How lucky that tyke! How many kids out there—born of less circumstance— miss that gift? Is there a greater jumpstart on life than love?
And I’m grateful. If warmth is the legal tender invested by family, a boatload of people are doubling down on my grandson.
The story’s not unique, of course; it is, though, specific to us. My deduction, moreover, (after decades of “people watching”), is that love is systemic…congenital…You can’t give what you haven’t received. Rarely have I seen a family breed love that hasn’t been raised in it.
Warmth, unlike the zone defense, is not readily learned.
I remember my youth. I picture the days–the “old neighborhood” off 105th: our Hopkins house, (home ’til “white flight” sent Jews scurrying to suburbs). It was a happy home, a family home. It was—dare I say—a “Poor man’s Ponderosa”. Our mom’s mom, Grandma Cele, lived above us, and though they didn’t live near, family never was far. There were first cousins and second cousins and aunts and uncles and great aunts and great uncles. To a mid-50’s Bruce or Harold, though, they were all just kin. We felt closer to Gary than Sheila because he was our age and a boy our age and she was a girl much older. But that was it. We all belonged.
My mind’s eye looks back: Marla Hoffman’s third birthday. Forest Hills Park. Family all over. Everyone alive—everyone still talking to everyone else. And we’re surrounded, (my brother and I), by all kinds of adults. Smiling adults. (We were “new” back then— !in a way. First boys of the next generation—in an era before equality—we bore baseball gloves, not dolls. And we could catch. We were—you guessed it—the only game in town).
I’ve never asked my brother this, but my guess is that, like me, there’s never been a time in his life he didn’t feel loved. It’s a wondrous feeling, that family adhesion. It toughens at times, to be sure…but cementing like no other, it’s a priceless foundation.
There’s a feel to family, a trust to it, a love to it.
…Which is why so readily, so steadily, a little Max Parker held Jason’s hand. And why, just months from now, in an Illinois park, a little Lucy will seize Michael’s.