And before the fireflies... the ferns.

   There are wrinkles embossed into my left arm. The creases look like the laced leaves of a fern. Who knew babies' blankets could be so green?

  The baby is asleep next to me on the bed. Finally. He is worn out after all his adventures this afternoon.

This is just one of them.

*******

(Did you know that adventure is common-place to a child?) 

   We sat down on the front steps (me on the concrete, him on my lap), and enjoyed the fresh evening air together after the steady all-day rain. The low clouds of the morning had cleared off and not only was the air fresh, it was golden. The baby was very young. Old enough to look at the world and follow it's motions, but young enough to surprise himself with his own. 
  I noticed he was looking at the tall ostrich ferns beside the wide steps. I reached out, and pulling a fern frond towards us, brushed it up and down his chubby legs. His toes curled tight, and he held very still, watching. "This is a fern," I told him. He surveyed it suspiciously. "Oh?" he seemed to say. "What's that?"  "Well-" I started to say, then: "What is a fern?" I asked myself, and suddenly, I caught a glimpse of it through his wondering eyes.

Tall so tall eye-level green shades of the same colour, so many but all the same, offered in an array of dizzying lines. A creature that swayed in so many directions all at once, softly, subtly. Was it alive? Was it nice? Or menacing? Was it like that animal the girl-person had called 'River' and had stuck his toes into? It had bitten him with cold...    
For a moment, the emerald was all-consuming and there was nothing but green for so far, and always shifting.

   Suddenly, he decided the fern was staying in it's place (wherever that was) and uncurling his toes then holding them stiff, he reached out both tiny hands, fingers spread wide- into the fringes of the frond. He wasn't coordinated enough to grasp them even though he wanted to, and they slipped through his fingers. He curled and uncurled his toes rapidly, waving his arms jerkily, gazing raptly still at the plant. I traced the frond down the middle of his face. His eyes closed as it passed and opened again, startled, staring. I tucked it between his toes and waited for his reaction. He paused his movements, toes automatically holding the stem tight. 

It didn't feel nice, but it didn't feel nasty at all. Somehow the thing was alive, but it didn't look at him. When would it come towards him? It moved all the time, in small incessant rustlings. It had to be alive, but that strange girl-person seemed to be friends with it, and SHE was ok.

   He started moving again, and the kicking waved the frond around, and somehow he managed to get his fingers tangled in it enough to actually break a piece off. Of course, he tried to put it in his mouth. Give that one brand-new tooth some practice, you know. He was fascinated by the fringes as long as we sat there.

   It reminded me of a poem I'd read earlier this spring.








the little horse is newlY

Born)he knows nothing,and feels
everything;all around whom is

perfectly a strange
ness(Of sun
light and of fragrance and of

Singing)is ev
erywhere(a welcom
ing dream:is amazing)
a worlD.and in

this world lies:smoothbeautifuL
ly folded;a(brea
thing a gro

Wing)silence,who;
is:somE

oNe.

-e.e.cummings