Snowed

Pittsburgh has been under meteorological assault for the last month: an empirical histogram of January weather patterns would be a straight line, with equal tallies for Snow, Arctic Snap, Freezing Rain, and Otherwise Shitty. For a while there I was taking it like a hero, rising at dawn and swaggering to the window to sneer at nature's Torture of the Day, all smiles and contempt, of course, what will it be today, mon vieux, black ice and howling winds? most excellent, I'll take a double. Gradually, the weather assumed a face, an intention: it was Nurse Ratched, and I was McMurphy, jaunty and unrepentant after a brisk turn with electroshock, or it was the erudite, smooth-talking Nazi torture master, and I, I was the unflappable, unbreakable British spy, all stiff lips and understatement. But even McMurphy had a hard time with the lobotomy; even Zweig's Dr. B. hit the wall. These days, I ooze instead of leap from my bed, and my sallies to the kitchen window are accompanied by an unmistakable twitching, of the fingers, of the soul. Let us hope the Punxutawney Marmot has a bad run of it on Monday.

Benjamin, a well-adjusted type, seems impervious to the weather system: his laughter rings from the rafters. What is startling about his laughter is its range, which includes, among other things, a Falstaffian Guffaw, a spasmodic giggle-shriek that sounds a little bit like a pentecostal preacher, and a long slow chuckle that suggests a wounded torero, or a hyena in waiting. Life is good, why worry about the weather, he seems to ask every evening as my frazzled form crests the top of the stairs, wind-burnt and road-savaged, why worry when there's so much to laugh about? And he shows me how to do it, erupting in giggles as I set my gloves on the heater, chuckling at the rattiness of my facemask, tittering at my goggles, my rakish helmet, my soggy coveralls, my spattered jacket my crusted socks. All very well, I retort bitterly as I dandle him on my knee, why should you care? You, after all, are a hydroponic animal, heated, lit, and nourished in an artificial ecosystem whose parameters are finely tuned to optimize performance: a creature, in sum, that does not need to ride seven miles through ice-crusted slush on roads with potholes the size of minivans and drivers who belong in anger-management therapy to get a bite to eat. Har har, he responds. Oh, my beautiful boy, how can I argue?

The kid is changing. His temper is, if anything, sweeter than before: he is beginning to understand the cycles of hunger, curiosity, exhaustion, sleep, and even as he's stuck in the bitter end of one round, he seems to be able to anticipate the next, which soothes him. He can concentrate. We set him in his tropical Jumperoo, and he will spend half an hour trying to perfect the hand motion that will send the plastic spinny-thing with the smiley-sun on a spindle into exactly the right rotations. He will grab Paco el Pajaraco by the beak, stare into his glass eyes, and wrestle him, psychologically, into the Mouth (where else?) I'm still trying to make my peace with this, reconcile my hypochondriac's heart with the fact that my son will cram any old grimy floor-sodden sock into his mouth and suck on it happily. He's a kind of slow moving Tazmanian Devil, and everything (especially breakable things) are meat, to be set upon and devoured. His charm is his leisureliness: he will suck a stuffed chicken to the bone, but slowly, savoring every subtle combination of floor mank, polyester, glass, cotton, and synthetic product label.

So many stories to tell: The Eruption of the First Tooth, The Curious Case of the Scream in the Night, Mark Toes and Life on the Baby Bath. Not tonight, but soon: February is official Blog About Baby Month. January was ruinous. With wife and baby gone, I doubled my mathematical efforts, with wife and baby back, I doubled them again. The month is a blur of late nights, early mornings, black beverages, endless meetings, vain pursuits, and formal motions. December made an attempt on my ear, which I resented, but January made an attempt on my sanity. Let us hear it for February, which, if the current climate distribution holds through Monday, and the Marmot doesn't do anything stupid, will be a month of sudden thaws, exuberant growth, spontaneous song, and copious outpouring.