Blue Pool

Arriving home from a day of performing music and then surfing – for the first time in months – I saw a blue plastic kids’ pool in my front lawn and thought, “My God, I really have a kid.” It’s weird how certain visual cues and events hammer home reality. I’ll think I’m as cognizant of a life situation as I can be and then realize there were corners of denial in my consciousness that I didn’t know were there. My preference, as in the case of the blue plastic pool we’ll be using tomorrow for the first time (my wife bought it at the store today for $4.99), is when the denial has been hiding some potential joy. Learning about the other corners of denial in my mind is less terrific, but also, surely, good.

Baby played a little this evening with her neighbor across the street, a girl a few months older than she is. The two families, including three generations in the case of our neighbors, sat around planning a double yard sale while the baby girls shared toys as well as they could. On a couple of occasions, our precious little one was a little aggressive reaching out to touch the neighbor girl’s face. My wife quickly intervened, and the two sets of new parents talked about dealing with infants’ unconscious efforts to rip our faces off when we feed them and hold them and change them. Teaching our angel that, to whatever degree that is acceptable behavior with mom and dad, it’s a lot less acceptable with anyone else may be a bit of a project. Or, more hopefully, she’s just affectionate and needs to learn the rules of touch.