New Data From the 4 mo. Check-In, Football and other Miscellany

(For those of you who only come for the pictures, I will include the written portion of our program at the end.)

At the Garfield football game--

a dismal loss against

some superior team

from across the water.

Grandad was in town

and decided that

high school football

sounded like good, clean fun.

Sam was really only happy

when we let him watch.

Grandad bought him the

hat a couple months ago.

I mean, c'mon-- it has earflaps!

Awesome.

Charlie, Grandad and Samuel

Marching band? Yes.
Bad loudspeakers? Yes.

Screaming, fanatical

parents? Yes.

And yet, he sleeps

for the second half.

Axel Krauter is somewhere

on that field. He is wearing purple

and a two digit number.

That's all I know.

Oh, and he's kinda tall.

Off West Seattle,

where we all had brunch

on Saturday,

while visiting David and Lora.

Charlie likes to grab the camera at unfunny times.

Yes, I am asleep.

Yes, it's around 7 am.

Yes, my hair does look

like that in the morning.

I post the entries here--

I include this so

I am not accused of some kind of censorship.

Also, to evoke pity.

For those playing the home game, Samuel was 16 lbs, 13 0z and 25 inches long at his 4 month exam. He's got a head circumference of 45 cm (metrics, meh). Dr. Del Boccaro is terrific and usually tells me to relax and that he's doing great. Hard to believe he was preemie.

For that matter, hard to believe we're parents. Charlie and I regularly comment to each other how weird it is. I mean, I'm someone's Mom? How freaky is that! As usual, I have renewed appreciation for my parents and all those before me. The joke is always, Wait-until-you-have-kids!, right? Well, it's true, but not in the way intended. It's not that I experience the same torture my parents did but that I am constantly brought up short with awe and gratitude.

This week is Halloween. It's only exciting to Charlie and I because it's an excuse to make ourselves ill on candy. I anticipate it will become a bigger deal in years to come. However, where there is Halloween, there is All Saint's Day. Or, Dia de los Muertos, if you are inclined. Barbara Kingsolver has a lovely chapter on this holiday in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Rather than frightening or depressing, it's a holiday that embraces our mortality-- something that seems all the more present with this fragile little person in my house. I bought some yellow mums today (should be marigolds, but what are you going to do at the end of October in the Pacific Northwest?) and I'll put them on the mantel this friday. Along with pictures of our dear ones. Charlie and I will drink some wine and partake of "dead" bread-- a sweet, anise scented egg bread-- and tell stories to Samuel about all the people he may never meet but will always know.

In that vein, people generally ask me about Samuel's name. We do call him Sam (Sammy Z.), but I always introduce him as Samuel. It's got a nice OT ring to it. People are interested in his first name, presuming it's a family name and assume the middle name(s) are our own personal freak out. The inverse is true. Samuel is just lovely. It reminds me of playwrights and diarists and my "big brother." But Zephyr is for my maternal great-Grandfather, Zephyr Houde. He died when my Grandmother was very young. Marsh is my surname, but I'm also the last one on this branch of the family to carry it. It reminds me of my Grandfather.

So I waited, and now I have a kid. I know things that I only sensed imperfectly before. And on the holiday of rememberance, I look at my child and see the shifting focus of past and future across his face and hear it in his name.