Happy, Happy New Year!
Portrait of The Editor holding his grandson, William Aidan O’Neill, born earlier today. During a blue moon!
It has been years and years since I last held a newborn child, and my arms — so much of them, so little of Will — needed a bit of re-adjustment, provided by his mother. Once properly arranged, we stood for twenty minutes or more, while Megan and Kathleen chatted. I worried a little bit about crushing him, but what really terrified me was the possibility that he might suddenly stop breathing. (Then he would twist a part of himself, and I’d breathe.)
According to Kathleen, Will does not look like a newborn. I don’t think he does, either. But he can squinch up his face in that wizened, little-old-gnome way, reminding us that there is nothing generic about him: he’s his own man already. (It isn’t the blanket that’s covering his face, below. Those are his sleeves.)
About becoming a grandfather, I can say only that it feels utterly normal: attending to this boy (and to any siblings who come along) is evidently something that I have been waiting to do all my life. In completing my adulthood, it concludes my adolescence. May Will make better use of youth than I did; and may I make as good a greybeard as my health and talent allow.
