This morning I was sitting on the couch with Ava out by the Christmas tree before the sun had come up. We were admiring the sparkles and the lights together, and Ava was pointing at different ornaments and saying, “Baby, baby?” over and over. She has a thing for babies.
After a bit I began staring out the window at the house under construction across the street. My mind wandered, and I had a vision of myself from far in the future. I was standing at the curb in some unknown city while Ava and another child I understood to be her as-yet-unborn sibling tried to help me into a levitating car that was waiting in the street. I was unsteady and a bit frail, and I could see Ava and her (brother?) exchanging sympathetic, slightly condescending glances behind my back as I grasped the top of the gently bobbing automobile and attempted to insert my leg into the passenger compartment.
After a few seconds I left that unsettling scene and traveled back in time to my grandmother’s home. It was a memory of the two of us sitting in front of her computer as I tried to explain the intricacies of her Outlook Express e-mail application. I recall thinking what it must be like to have the world accelerate and pass you by. I came to understand as I sat with her that what she was looking at was the equivalent of a new language, and that she had almost no concept of how to navigate it without my help. Without me, she was nearly lost.
It was only a minute or so before I pulled out of my daydream and came back to the sweet sound of Ava’s babbling. I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a big squeeze. She reached up and patted my head in an offhand way, like you’d pat a dog as you passed him while he dozed in a patch of sunshine on the floor. “Baby?” She pointed at a small wooden angel hanging from the tree. “Baby?”