New Parents

I went to visit my friends Michael & Calvin, whose new daughter, Vivien Stella, is a delight to behold, (and, of course, to hold.) She is simply marvelous. For most of the couple of hours that I was around, she just slept and ate and fell asleep while eating and so forth. She's only a week old, after all. But she did spend about five minutes staring into the world, eyes ablaze with recognition of what I don't know, but definitely something. You can watch her brain work when you look into her eyes.

Strange how parenthood changes the people you're close to--in ways you expected, and in ways you didn't. As soon as I arrived at their apartment, they did the quick "do you want to make a bottle," kind of thing that you hear new parents doing all the time, but it was also remarkably refreshing to still be able to have a normal conversation about whatever other thing was happening. I've been around plenty of new parents who can't talk about ideas anymore, just the baby.

They'll be good fathers.