In a Word....

As with most people who have an acceptable level of brain activity, I spent many hours of my youth pondering the great questions: Where did life come from? What is it about anyway? What will I be when I grow up?

As for the first two, I have long since accepted that I will never get satisfactory answers. I'm with Brian Friel in his play Translations where the old schoolmaster, Hugh O'Donnell, says, in that redemptive phrase: "Confusion is not an ignoble condition."

However, I think I may now know what I want to be when I grow up. It hit me in a moment of unexpected clarity recently when I met Benjamin for the first time. He is the latest family member and our youngest pandemic baby to date.

Benjamin is not our only pandemic baby. There's a little girl expected in Sydney next month and her brother, Connor, who arrived there on February 20th, 2020. That, it must be said, is all that is in common between Connor and the Covid-19 virus except, possibly, for the speed with which both put themselves about.

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Connor, our first pandemic baby, will be two tomorrow. Happy birthday , Connor! (Looking forward to seeing you and your baby sister on that first visit to Ireland later this year. Your parents too.)

But back to Benjamin. Born in Brussels in mid-December 2020, his arrival in Ireland last Christmas for that first visit was to witness and experience at first hand the extraordinary command an infant exerts, effortlessly, over adults.

Willingly enslaved, all jumped to satisfy his every need, morning, noon or wintry night. Not just his parents. Not that he is at all demanding. But who could resist that smile with its 4½ teeth? Not I!

Or, as when he waves back to those waving at him. It was as exciting as the scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that film where extraterrestrials respond to the scientists’ five-note sequence, indicating they are actually communicating. I did not expect such conversation with one so young.

When I grow up I want to be like Benjamin, to have that effortless charm which reduces all who come in contact with me to a willing slavery.

Aspire, seek eagerly to attain. From Latin aspirare (to breathe)

inaword@irishtimes.com