August 23rd

This morning Jessica showed me pictures of Ollie when he was one year old. I've always found looking back at photos to be a bitter sweet experience. It's painful to be confronted by the passage of time captured in a photograph. Those one year old cheeks flushed with a peculiar kind of earnest exuberance. His deep set eyes pleading with the world to take notice but then receding behind thick eye lashes as soon as anyone does. He's an illusive creature like a heron turning its back to the open water and flying into the reeds. Looking at photos on Jessica's phone, I need to choke down an irrational sadness as if that little boy in the pictures is gone forever and not in the bedroom down the hallway about to wake up and come running into our room.

When I see myself in a photo I remember being there in a particular setting. I remember what we were doing. I'm reminded of what I looked like but I'm never who I expected. The image of this strange person, my past self, is like a wavering shadow of who I thought I was floating somewhere (I can't pin down) between the past and the present.

In the photo there is no substance of the moment I'm looking back upon. The substance has vanished and in it's place is merely a sign, an appearance of a body but the picture rarely portrays what I was feeling, who I thought I was beyond and behind the physical environment.

So there is always a divide when we look at a photo. It's even there when we look in the mirror, although when we're young we usually blink or glance sideways before becoming conscious of it. It's the division of time, the quotient of which is longing and wonder about who we are and what we'll become during this grand finitude we call existence.

At six years old Oliver's blue-gray eyes are still a mixture of curiosity and apprehension betraying his disbelief in how big the world is. I only wonder why more people do not look upon our world like Ollie does. He leaps across the playground as easily and as gracefully as he does through imaginary worlds, often the two settings colliding in the midst of some ninja or pirate conspiracy. Something about him makes me think he is acutely aware of being alone in the universe and this sensitivity extends to empathy towards others and animals.

A piece of iron feel on my ankle in our garage. I winced in pain and when Ollie found out what happened he reassured me by saying, "I banged my ankle too dad. Ankles really hurt. Are you ok?"

He is still learning to take risks. He's reticent in the face of new challenges. Classrooms, water, dreams all cause him to pause and take stock of who he is before jumping in. He will benefit from teachers who don't shame him for making mistakes but still encourage him to test his limits.

He feels his own powerlessness, how small he is in such a vast universe. This can be a powerful quality but it also makes him vulnerable to being drawn away from himself by others. I'm grateful to his mom for teaching him to recognize his feelings and to trust in us, his family, for unconditional love and support.

Oliver is so much more than I conceived. And so is his little brother already insisting on making his own peanut butter sandwiches.Read more