Usually, when I think of A, I have a jumbled impression of his wildly convoluted stories about building houses and killing bad guys, tantrums over going to bed, elaborate coffee table altars and painstaking Lego constructions. Occasionally, though, I am struck by A as, simply, himself. The first instance I remember is when I realized he no longer had the baby smell, that soft aroma of milk and soap, but instead, smelled sweaty and dirty, because he was no longer a baby but a little boy. He must have been around two at the time. A year ago, when he was three, I was holding his hand after he had fallen asleep, and I felt the calluses that had grown as a result of his hard playing. It was a shock to discover that he no longer had the soft, fleshy hands of a baby, but the vaguely hard, dry hands of a man. Tonight I checked on A after he was asleep. He was rolled up in his comforter, and as cute and vulnerable as he looked, I also felt that I saw a glimmer of the man he would become...
