2005-07-26 - 9:47 a.m.

>Menu tonight: Rufus con bebe

I am looking at a 6 month old baby right now. I will tell you how this preposterous event came to pass.

Wednesday evening, Bee and I went to see the Wonka movie (which we enjoyed quite a bit, thank you very much). We arrived home around 10:30 pm to find maybe 6 messages on our machine from Bee's older sister sounding uncharacteristically frantic. Bee called her sister's place about 250 kilometers north of us. We were kind of freaking out because, as I mentioned a while back, she has a 6 month old boy, and I immediately thought of an emergency involving him.

Instead, it was Bee's brother-in-law. He had survived a horrific crash between his truck and a runaway boat on a trailer. His 5-ton delivery truck had been completely destroyed. The engine had pinned his legs, crushing his feet and shattering all his leg bones. Thanks to his seatbelt, his head and torso suffered no more than painful glass cuts and heavy bruising. If he hadn't have been wearing it, it would have been his life. If that boat had stayed attached a little longer, it would likely have missed him altogether. As they prepared to put him on a helicopter to bring him 250 km south to a hospital here, his wife and mother-in-law (Bee's sister and Mom) happened to drive along the same stretch of highway from the other direction on their way to a camping site.

How painful are the vagaries of chance.

As it is, he will not be on his feet for a year, and even then he will likely always need a cane. He has metal rods all through his legs and feet, metal pins sticking out of each toe, more metal than bone. He has had at least 10 hours of surgery so far, and he will need more. He lost a lot of blood in the endless period in which was waiting for an ambulance and getting freed of the mangled wreck of his truck, and has needed several bouts of blood transfusion.

So Bee's sister is staying in our office/music room/guest room with her little boy. He's not quite crawling yet, and he's just now started having a little soft cereal in addition to breast milk. He's an extremely cute and attentive little guy. I am kind of resigned to the role of bumbling Uncle ("Am I holding him right?"), but he does make a captive audience for the newest addition to my repertoire: "Peace Train" by Cat Stevens. (Did you know that the US now refuses Cat Stevens entry because he a Muslim? It is because (long before 9/11 and all that) he answered an interview question about the concept of Jihad, which was then taken out of context. They actually turned a passenger jet around to send him back to England. He wrote "Peace Train"! I doubt he's a terrorist! But I digress...)

Anyway, it is a little difficult to get enough privacy to update (or do anything else) so I will try to post brief bits here and there. I am going a little crazy, I must admit. I am a person who needs time to myself, and there is very little of that commodity to go around. I assure you, however, that I am being very helpful. That's what you have to do. It's family.

A lot of babysitting for me and Bee leads to this little epiphany: we ain't ready for babies. But I am confident now that we would be good parents. Just not ready for that responsibility. Not yet anyway.

Besides, it might be a little cruel of me to pass on my diseased mutant genes to another generation.

Ha ha.

It is strange how much fun a little baby is when it isn't crying or peeing on you. Strange, because they don't do anything that is actually very interesting. They squawk and squabble. They wiggle and reach. They grab things, shake things, look at things. But it is all captivating. It's written even in my mutant genes - "the baby is king and queen of your universe."

I dreamt that the baby was talking last night. That we asked him questions and he answered back in a completely intelligible, but utterly infant voice.

He's sleeping right now, head tucked on one shoulder, foot giving a little twitch now and then...

Oh damn, I think he's waking up...

Yep. See ya later.

Wish you were here. Send sleep. Love, Rufus.