May 12, 2003 - Monday
I've been thinking a lot lately about a visit from some friends of ours about a year and a half ago. They had a boy who was just about three at the time, as well as a girl of slightly more than one, and after they'd been here long enough for the kids to get his bearings in a new place, the house turned into a speed track. The boy started running around the effective first floor loop in our house that goes through the living, kitchen, and hall and around the stair case like a dervish while his father effectively chased after him making sure no harm was done. I sat with his mother calmly in the living room as if nothing were happening, having a pleasant conversation.

I'd known this boy since he was born and we had visited his parents for dinner on several occasions, but I remember visiting when he was a baby and thinking what a loud baby he was. Of course, when Harry was born he was about the same and that level of noise became the norm for us, too.The thing about that scene a year and a half ago wasn't that this boy was misbehaving in any way. Indeed, I was pretty sure he was just being a three-year-old boy. Yet, as I sat there with his mother, sensing that to her there was nothing out of the ordinary going on, I knew pretty well that in about a year and a half that would be Harry and the noise level around here would have reached a similar normalcy. Sure enough, here we are.


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