Dear Diary: State Visitor
Here we were, snowbound. I had canceled an outpatient skin surgery, and Kathleen had decided to work from home. So we were both here even though, according to the calendar, neither one of us ought to have been. When I learned that Megan and Will were, against all the weather odds, out and about, I asked my daughter to make our house her next stop, and she did. Thus did Will O’Neill pay his first visit to his maternal grandparents, at the ripe old age of not-quite-six weeks.
Nana Penny made it all possible. Of all of us on Megan’s side of the family, Penny is the only one whose experience with infants is better than theoretical. (Given that Megan is not far from forty, I hope that I’ll be excused for having forgotten what little experience of babies I have that hasn’t been superseded by no-smoking regulations.) She burped him into contentment after his second feeding, which was not preceded by sleep of any kind.
As I say, he’s an intellectual. Megan says, “We’ll see.” I say that I’m not talking about the future. He’s an intellectual now. Which is not at all inconsistent with his loving his Texas boots.