The First Word

There they are, the three of them, together on the grass, Mother and Father looking down at Baby. The sunlight comes down through the leaves of a tree and speckles the grass, the blanket, Baby’s face. The sun is bright and warm, and it kisses the backs of Mother’s and Father’s necks, and their t-shirts, and the ground. There are clouds in the sky; big, white, cotton-ball clouds, the type that used to make Father so happy he’d feel like a water balloon with too much water, distended, bobbing from the faucet, filled up to the bursting with all those thoughts that now seemed so naïve and youthful to him. But he doesn't see the clouds, only feels them, in breaks of sunlight on his neck.

He watches Mother watching Baby, sees the furrowed brow and downturned mouth, which look like sorrow but are actually the result of worry and self-destroying love colliding on a face that is accustomed to neither. Baby watches Mother’s face too and sees only Mother. He sees her eyes and her mouth and the nose and hair which make up Mother. His Mother. Love is the word for what he feels now but only because there are no better words. His real feelings are really no feelings at all, more like being covered head to toe in a warm, billowing sheet, a comfort and well-being and safety so thorough and all-encompassing that Baby writhes and kicks and grins with the pleasure of it, when Mother looks at him, when he sees her. His Mother.

Baby's mouth moves through his grin, his teeth like jack-o-lantern teeth, his fists clenching and unclenching with the thoughts he thinks and the ecstasy of the billowing sheet of love and the very pleasure of being, which fill him. He knows what he wants to say. He can see the word forming in his mind, forming of the wisps and associations and memories which surround the word like fallen leaves around a big tree. He sees her face, before him and inside of him, together.