Light of Númenor

I have seen many beautiful things in my travels. I have walked the immense, cow-specked green of Ireland, I have eaten tapas and witnessed the beautiful, bronzed Spanish people eating them, I have walked where Alice and Wonderland and The Hobbit were formulated, even went on a date with a German girl, but none of them, none of them compare to the squirmy beauty of little Luthien Horner.

I meet her awake, two months into her life, but before words; her busy arms and legs pumping like the Spider up the drainpipe, panoramic eyes sweeping left and right as if imprinting the entire world upon her retinas as fast as she can before, again, she has had enough and slides into a peaceful, log-like slumber.

Andy and Tawny, her fawning parents, were expecting when we left, and Tawny tells me of how she is having to get her wedding dress taken in even more, because – sans baby – she is much more slender than she projected. Instead of walking to DuPont Circle trading stories of Starbucks and ecumenism and the anxieties and plans of early 20s life, we walk with a bulky stroller, minding every step, and when we arrive and lay down to read, Andy and Tawny have a precious new relative to join us, one that looks like both of them, whose body seems to lift off the ground when she farts. The breastfeeding, too, is a new development in our friendship, one I suppose never fails to surprise a friend – or, indeed, a parent – when the first child is born.

At night, she awakens with a soft cry that wakes me on my air mattress in front of the TV, and soon rouses Andy or Tawny to her aid, coddling and feeding her, until at last adults and child together slip into a wistful sleep. It is different to hang out with my friends now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. For one, Tawny – whom I have only known since she was expecting – can join us in smoking hookah outside or occasionally forsake a fruit juice for a beer with the dudes. The main difference, though, is the look in their eyes, the responsibility in their hearts that overflows into everything, the new flood of joy and focus onto the most beautiful little creature I have ever seen.


She cries and, as a friend, I want to find the ninja in the room and fight him off until she is either safe or sufficiently amused. I want to talk some sense into the baby boy who stood her up on a date to play with blocks and who needs to know how special that little girl really is. I want to see those little corners of her toothless mouth curve upwards in delight, but alas, there are no ninjas, or boys, and sadly even less occasion for the stories of Europe, of favorite dinosaurs – the iguanodon – or nonfiction of my childhood, like how Paul Bunyan harvested all of the trees on the Great Plains, and how several men used to have to skate grease across his broad, iron griddle just so he could make his famous, Chicago-sized flapjacks. No, this is a time for her parents, and her parents for her, and for this friend to tag along so graciously aside, taking notes on how to deal and adding to my thoughts on children, already positive, now bolstered with a deeply metaphysical richness I had no idea our physics-driven world could withstand.