Three Bears

Chris and Mimi arrived last Thursday on a late night flight out of Las Vegas. I would like to imagine that they let their hair down on the layover, maybe dropping a few C notes in a high ante game of roulette and smoking doobies in the VIP lounge, but knowing what I know of those two, it's more likely that they did the old leche-vitrine in Smokey Pete's Old Thyme gift shop, or read books quietly by their assigned gate. (They refused to divulge details.) I had volunteered to pick them up once they hit the City of Pitts, but at the last minute they decided to rent a car and find the hotel under their own steam, so I stayed home and practiced pentatonics on my steel string. A quick call at 11:30 p.m. confirmed that they had arrived without incident and would meet us at some leisurely hour the next day. So much for biting their nails to see the baby.

Cosmopolitan cool aside, Old Man Higgins is clearly very conscious of Zoogle's dual status as lovable alien and generational symbol. Not only is he Higgin's first biological grandson, but his arrival breaks what had begun to seem a generational decision to forgo family ties. With most of the brood in their mid to late thirties, it had started to appear as if baby-creation had been permanently and suggestively struck from the agenda, with everyone in such hot pursuit of a glorious future (or panic flight from a dark past) that the present had become permanently unavailable for long-term, responsibility-infusing projects. Not that Baby Z. represents an intentional departure from this policy: as an unplanned love child, Z. has been an agent, not a consequence of change. But change is to stodgy old academics as mountains are to Mohammads: the basic reciprocity of motion defies reason, expectation, hope. Oppressed by a present he viewed as a weak copy of a vibrant past, Rilke tells us that "there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life." But the you that reconfigures itself in the gaze of history is not the same you who falls into the hands of a restless creation, the you to whom Life concedes the the vain illusion of being Captain and Master. There is no place that does not seize you. You will be changed by Life.

So life struck, our position changed, and the older generation came calling. The paranoia of being a nuisance runs strong in those two, unfortunately: it was hard to drag them from the hotel and get them to hang with us. (Yes, I agree, a hotel is odd. Who stays in a hotel when the sole object of the trip is to spend time with the new grandchild? There was some mention of cat allergies, of an aversion to hard futons, etc. I think the real reason is that they didn't want to be a pain in the ass. Hah. They have no idea. What they need are some good Colombian in-laws who move in for weeks or months at a time, swilling beer 'til the wee hours of the morning, carousing and talking politics and cooking all manner of unmentionable delights from the time the sun rises is the morning to that dark dawn moment when the last screech owl circles to a silent stop.) One day they decided to take a field trip to Falling Waters, a Frank Lloyd Wright house about an hour out of Pittsburgh. We couldn't accompany them because the house refuses to admit children under 6 (a policy that must be in violation of some equal access law.) They left in the morning, spent all day on the road, and called in the evening to let us know that they would be returning to their hotel at 5pm or so and would see us the following day. I had to call them back and sell them on the manifold pleasures of Time With Zoogle, tempting them back with promises of good food and copious drink. (Thereby blowing my Baby-ace, which I should have reserved for sitting favors.)

Teeth pulling aside, the visit was wonderful. In honor of Catalina's birthday, Mimi produced a batch of her world-famous fish stew, a murky vehicle for everything under the waves, including scallops, the flesh of seven kinds of white fish, shrimp heads, shark ears, manta tails and monster fins. We gobbled it down late on a Friday night, after a thwarted attempt to attend the Gist street poetry reading and before an impromptu birthday party that included a handful of good friends, a few glasses of vino, and the traditional Toews family cake (with the conventional whipcream replaced by a suspicious caramel-pecan spread that ended up being surprisingly popular.) We took walks in the park; we ate at the Piccolo Forno; we took pictures; we shot the shit; we cooked, we sang, we sat on our asses and we twiddled our fat thumbs. Must say, this is a life style I could get into.