I enjoy working and playing with kids, though I’ve never really been a big fan of infants. Babies, before they can do anything, cute though they sometimes might be (and uncute as they just as often are) are kind of creepy in their helplessness. That the infant’s ability to communicate is far more limited than Sekhnet’s cat also interferes with my complete enjoyment of very young babies. Nonetheless, I recognize that you have to participate in other people’s joy in their babies. It seems inhuman not to at least smile, and coo and make some melodic remark about the baby’s cuteness.
Sekhnet’s cousin, a new single mother, asked Sekhnet and me if we wanted to hold the baby the other day. It was the first time either of us had seen mother and child since the birth. The baby was born the weight of an average dinner lobster, many weeks prematurely, and now, three months later, has ballooned to eight pounds. The mother offered the baby and, as Sekhnet hesitated, I took the tiny child, smaller than a miniature doberman.
I gently picked her up, held her in front of me and smiled at her. She burst out crying. Her mother was amazed, laughed and kept saying she’d never seen that reaction. She must have said it ten times.
Afterwards, and in spite of all my graciously accepted apologies to the mother, who kept repeating that the little girl had never reacted that way, ever, to anything, I felt pretty good knowing I still haven’t lost my touch with babies.
gratuitousblahg 