I've never had more respect, more amazement and more awe at the incredibly sophisticated physics of our bodies that we take for granted everyday. After slithering out of the primordial soup, we have evolved into upright bipeds that balance ourselves on two legs, walk around, open doors, sit down and stand up... mindless tasks that I now see as unrecognized miracles. I imagine an alternate universe in which we flounder around in the dirt, like a fish taken out of a pond, because whatever electrical charge, whatever gene mutation, whatever little enzyme alteration or inexplicable thing that happened that allows us to stand upright and balanced, hasn't taken place. We crawl around on our bellies, accomplishing only those things that a supine species like ours can do: building mud huts, eating meals of berries and nuts, and growing massive callouses on our knees.
As a newborn Mylo was helpless (as I imagine all newborns are). He didn't have a blink reflex, much less any awareness of what was going on around him. In five and a half months time he has grown into a little wrestler, twisting his head from side to side in order to take in whatever is going on around him. He grabs most everything within his orbit and quickly deposits it into his mouth. He kicks relentlessly, as though swimming in the air. He screams with excitement, shouts with joy, laughs out loud when I change his diaper, and yells in overly-dramatic frustration when I try to pick his nose. He has, in short, developed into a little person with likes and dislikes, a huge interest in the world around him, and a great love in his heart.
The physics of it all are absolutely mind-blowing. Day by day I watch his body grow, and his mind develop, and his personality emerge. Friends with grown children always caution me how quickly it all goes by, and surely they are right if the last five and a half months are any kind of measuring stick. In no time at all he'll be walking, and then talking, and then going to school... and then (much to my wife's chagrin), he'll become a man and have a life. Much of that development will undoubtedly be my responsibility. But as I watch him grow before me I'm struck by how much of it isn't. Yes, I stand beside him smiling, whispering 'yes' and giving him kisses, but his growth and development, up to this point anyway, seem to be largely governed by some prearranged agreement between nature and his individual genetics. Which isn't to say that I'm inconsequential-- I know that I'm not-- only that I'm in awe of how much is contributed from elsewhere. Awestruck and, I suppose, grateful.
