Mr. Skeptical

Boston Globe

We called him Mr. Skeptical when he was born because he came into the world scowling and it wasn't just your typical infant ''I'm hungry. I'm wet. Feed me! Change me now!" scowl.

It was an old man's reproving look. It was as if Adam had been sitting in a Chippendale wing chair, sipping brandy and smoking a cigar in front of a fire somewhere in posh London, when,  puff, he blinked and found himself in an infant's body in the neonatal unit of a New York City hospital.

It was an outrage and a mistake. That's what he told us with his eyes and his frown. ''Who took my Schopenhauer and what am I doing here?"

We rocked him. We sang him lullabies. We kissed his fuzzy little head and his soft baby cheeks and we tickled his toes and placed him on a blanket on the floor next to his little-bit-older cousin and said: ''See. She likes it here. So will you."

But my grandson was not buying any of this.

We bundled him up and took him outside at night and showed him the moon and the stars. In the daytime, we pointed out the trees and said, ''Listen to the birds." We bought him soft teddy bears he could feel and rattles he could clutch and a pacifier he could suck on. And we wrapped him in receiving blankets for at least three months.

Still he frowned.

One day, when he was still new, we -- his mother, aunt, cousin, and I -- went to a Mexican restaurant and he was in his baby seat, looking around, clearly disapproving. And there sat his cousin in her baby seat beside him, enchanted by the lights, the music, the world.

I thought: He doesn't trust the world.

Now he does. Little by little, all of us who love him loved away his resistance. His scowl, his misgivings, his reluctance to give himself over to this world, they're gone, along with the old man. The child is fully present now. ''Mine." ''Play!" ''Lulu!" ''Mimi!" ''Auntie!"

Joy and wonder spill out of him.

Sometimes I think we sold him a bill of goods.

He is 23 months old now and his world is ''Sesame Street" and ''Signing Time," ''Barney" and ''Caillou," books, songs, his train set, and people who love him.

He knows that cows moo, horses neigh, ducks quack, and kittens meow, and he believes that there really is an Old MacDonald who sings ''E-I-E-I-O" and a rosy-cheeked old woman who swallowed a fly.

No news. No reality shows. No reality beyond what he sees.

We play with zoo animals. We live in a Fisher-Price world.

He walks up to strangers expecting them to like him. And they do because he's little and he's cute.

But he won't always be little and cute, and everyone he meets won't always like him or be good to him. And this is just the easy stuff.

I raised three children. None of this is new. I know that life isn't fair or safe or easy or even consistent.

But I look at Adam and it feels new.

''Trust us," we said to him. And he did.

When he was 8 months old, the tsunami struck Southeast Asia. We'd won him over by then. He was playing in my family room when the waves came and swallowed other people's children, thousands of them.

He doesn't know these things happen.

He loves Mexican restaurants now. He loves the music and he loves to dip. He points to the sky and says ''moon," and when he can't find it, he says, ''It's hiding." He hears the train whistle and says ''choo-choo." He loves to go to the grocery store because the man at the deli gives him cheese.

Children make you want to build walls to protect them. But all you can do is what you can do -- buckle their seat belts, hold their hands, teach them to be good, pray for them. And love them.

He comes to visit. He sits on my lap and we read ''Barnyard Dance."

''With a BAA and MOOO and COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO," and Adam bobs his head and sings along.

And he is so happy it hurts my heart.

''More, Mimi?" he says. And we begin again. ''Bow to the horse, bow to the cow. Twirl with the pig if you know how."

And right now, life is good.