Child
He is your baby. Or your daughter’s or granddaughter’s. He cannot speak but has begun to crawl. Before long he will be an importunate child, charging at you with questions, testing his will or showing it under control.
I did not believe in the gods, in miracles or magic. But faith, though no explanation, works. I like the idea of belief. I believe in this child’s goodness. Which is an illusion. He owes his niceness to luck.
My love for him is unreasonable and overwhelming. If I could only extend it to trees and rivers; to animals and garbage; to cities and institutions! But this is a family matter. Only my native city comes anywhere close.
His love for me (he turns it on, then returns to a toy) is so undeserved, so smiling and trusting and lacking in calculation. Is it an instinctual ploy, a cuteness to win attention? I think, for I am flooded with tender gratitude, that I do not care where it came from.
Without some such pale copy of feeling I could not see a leaf and have the idea of Leaf. No thoughts would arrange themselves. Without emotion thought is impossible. How he extends me!
Holding this child, I feel a nonchalance towards fear, more heady than the highs of rocky expeditions, more intoxicating than books. For this child I would take up with magic and contradictions. I have begun to.
Page(s) 16-17
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