It may be time once again to write a Sunday blog…

Elliot is three months old today. I’d have to look at a calendar to tell you how many weeks that is, as it has been a bit of a blur. We went to brunch today at the German restaurant around the corner from us with Mira and David – not exactly to celebrate – more to have good German brunch. I may actually like the brunch at The Feasting Fox better than the Bevo brunch – it’s smaller, but it is also less expensive and less crowded. Let’s hear it for marginal neighborhoods!!!

I am procrastinating, as usual, my weekend workload from school. I hope not to get behind again this term; and yet, I have been teaching on and off for over ten years now and it seems no matter the education circumstance, I am always behind on my grading. Jes went to visit the Illinois grandparents today. I stayed home to grade, clean, and generally get ready for another work week. Going back to work after sixteen days off was difficult. Last Monday I was ready to look for a new career, but I’m back in the swing of things now. I’m teaching two different books that I love, so I think I’ll be able to make it until the summer.

I’ve heard numerous clichés about becoming a parent, how it changes everything in your life. It’s true that my priorities are shifting, which I expected, I did not expect the specific alterations in viewpoint that I am experiencing. I was holding my son this morning, letting his mother sleep in a little bit, and we were watching The Third Man (Elliot liked the zither music with which the film is scored). I was thinking about how I was holding my son as my father held me, and as Elliot may someday hold his own child. Knowing who my wife and child are, knowing that each of my students has parents who have changed their diapers, fed and clothed them for years as I am just beginning to do with my son – it’s a growth in perspective that is difficult to describe. There’s something sublime in detaching from our culture’s worship of individuality, to see instead a haphazard continuity of generations – every parent a child, every child a potential parent.

My nephew Trevor, my sister V’s son, was still in town this past weekend on his Christmas vacation. I was there soon after he was born, held him many times as an infant, fed and changed him as a toddler, gave he and his brother their first rides on dirt bikes, and occasionally gave him life advice in the years from teen to college student. Friday night we played roulette at the new casino downtown and drifted our way through the bars of The Landing. As a man he has become very much like my brothers, like my father, like myself.

There is something sublime in the haphazard continuity of generations.