Roby’s nearly one, and the accumulation of recognizably kid-things grows all the time. Like today for example, she got pulled in a red wagon around an apple orchard. She munched on cider doughnuts and apples and made sounds like singing. It was hot and she didn’t complain. When her mom wiped sweat from my brow, from pulling her, Roby tried the same thing, slapping me across the face. She’s trying. She brings a great deal of spirit to everything she does, which is all we can hope for, really.  

She’s real interested in walking, she plays with walking the way adults might the thought of a novel. Mmmm I’ll take a few steps, hmmm I could potentially make it over there, this is the beginning of a path that will make me quite a tough walker indeed.

Roby is more fun to hang out with than anyone I know, and I get to do that every day, it’s incredible. I feel very lucky. I have learned more from her than any professor. The way being in her proximity demands I live, the realities she has revealed and given me the opportunity to ruminate on, it’s the best.

I can see the appeal of having only one child. To focus entirely on this being and what is essentially her worship. But as I write that it’s pretty clear how bad that would be for a kid and why so many only Childs are so weird, not that I know many of them, but they have a reputation, I think it’s safe to say.

Anyways, if we’re lucky we’ll have another kid, hopefully several. And I can already see from here the astonishing lesson in that. I can barely imagine loving another person as much as I love Roby, I cannot imagine being as attentive, as focused, as adoring. But I have to believe that “the heart is not like a cup that gets filled up.” A quote I often attributed to the quality of polyamory, I now find hollow and profane in that context.

In the context of children it seems an insight into Godliness, in his ability to love every person with a wholeness not diluted, ever.