The Boy Inside The Baby

Then Jacob called for his sons and said: “Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come.” . . . All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said to them when he blessed them, giving each the blessing appropriate to him.

—Genesis 49:1, 28

It’s our job to let our children grow up, to let them become big and smart and grown-up, but it’s so tempting to keep them little forever, or at least to try. These six months have been the blink of an eye, the season I’d longed for, some of the sweetest months of my life. There’s nothing like a first baby, but the second time around has a loveliness all its own, because you know what’s coming—you know that this baby, this tiny, odd wild animal will grow into a person with words and ideas and personality.

It’s like Michelangelo chipping the block of stone to free the sculpture inside: the grown-up boy is in there, furled tightly like a bud on a branch, unfolding ever so slowly and then sometimes all at once. Now that I know Henry the five-year-old, I can see evidence of this boy all the way back, in his earliest moments: strong, imaginative, full of energy. And so I peer into Mac’s little face: Who will you be? What clues are you leaving us even now about the boy inside all that baby?