Stairs and Other Frontiers

My first day of retirement was not typical, if that word can be applied to a condition that has only just begun. Claire was over by 8 with Isaiah, who was smiling his 100-watt smile and soon would be crawling around the house chortling (I seldom use that word but that is what he was doing), positively squealing with glee, especially when he spied the carpeted stairs. 

He must be capable of anticipation given his excitement on simply seeing the stairs. He must be able to hold in his infant mind all the possibilities stairs can provide, the pulling up and the climbing. Of course, he did not see the tumbling down and the falling, which  I, with my adult brain, was only too ready to imagine.

When I watch Isaiah explore the world I see with fresh eyes how stunning it is, with its corners and shadows and tiny parakeet feathers that he can almost but not quite pick up because, as Claire says, the pincer grasp doesn’t become fully operational until nine months of age and Isaiah is eight and a half.

In Isaiah I also see the power of movement for its own sake. The toys that held his attention last week pale in comparison now. It is as if he is reenacting the push of human exploration, the grand urge to trudge on to the next mesa and beyond the far river bend. Watching Isaiah I can better appreciate how the American West was settled, why even now deep sea divers are exploring the last great earthly frontier.