Leah was giving Ava a bath two nights ago, and I was in the bathroom with them for a time. I stood and looked down at Ava as she splashed around in the tub, sitting sideways with her little head sticking up out of the water, and I was struck again by the fact that this little human being is a product of us.
It’s a realization that washes over me from time to time, out of nowhere, usually. It’s cause for a real cognitive dissonance. Primarily because it’s pretty amazing and weird that there’s a tiny person in the world, walking and talking and laughing and pooping and crying, who wouldn’t be here in that same form without my direct participation. To a lesser degree, it’s unsettling to find myself startled at this realization. Why is this not a fact that I carry around at the front of my mind at all times? How am I ever lulled into the fantasy that my life doesn’t include her? Is there some profound biological protection method at play? Maybe all it proves is that I’m too susceptible to navel gazing?
I’ve been buried under a project at work lately, the first presentation of which happened today. It went about as I expected, and I got some good suggestions for retooling before my spiel to the high-muckety-mucks later this month. The most objectionable part about the whole thing is that I had to do it in PowerPoint. I’ve never been a huge detractor of this oft-maligned piece of software, but it’s true that some mind-numbing presentations have tainted it (as a nod to the application’s ignominious past, I named my file jumptheshark.ppt). I might try taking the presentation into Keynote on my MacBook for the next gig, just to let the audience know who’s boss before the first slide ever hits the screen. Aside from a floor-length purple fox coat, nothing says “pimp” like that glowing Apple logo beaming through a darkened meeting room.