In the past two days, I have seen both horrible and wonderful things.
While sitting on the beach, er, researching information for a future piece Thursday, I spied a baby on my port side scrambling along in the sand on all fours like an oversized fiddler crab. His chubby hands doubled as chubby feet, as he expertly moved about sideways, backwards, and forwards — to and fro.
I’ve seen infants do this before, and knew the crab-like baby on the beach was within inches of doing the most human thing possible: rising up on his two back claws, to start seeing the world from a higher place.
He’d still be looking up at most things, but now also straight ahead and down at others ...
I got back to my research … and sometime later the little crab returned to the magic spot where the surf licks at the beach, with what looked to be his dad and grandpa. The little crab was still dashing about on all fours, but this time with more reliance on his back two. He’d push up hard with his front claws before crumbling to the sand off his back ones.
I realized I was about to have the incredible privilege of watching this baby take his first steps. I had only seen this one time before, when my eldest, Kaite, stood up, pushed off and toddled into my arms.
You’ll never see anything better in your life, and the lump you get in your throat while inhaling the memory and typing it out testifies to that.
I missed my younger daughter’s first steps. Kristin began her two-legged journey through life while I was banging around a newsroom that magic evening helping to manufacture the next day’s paper.
When I departed for work, she was but a crawler, when I returned many hours later, she was a cruiser, and able to bang from coffee table to chair, and chair back to coffee table, leaving spilled water glasses and TV remotes in her choppy wake.
Now the little crab on the beach was about to change everybody’s life around him, and I was going to be a fortunate witness. The grandpa had propped the little crab on his two back claws, and he precariously swayed in the wind, the surf lapping at his fat little toes. The dad was crouched just an arm’s-length away, calling for the little crab to push off and join him …
It was riveting theater.
The baby wobbled on his fat feet for what seemed like forever, before his grandpa released him. His father, eyes alight, urged his son to join him. Suddenly free and untethered, the baby wobbled again, before plopping on his ample, back padding.
They tried again … and again … but the tired baby wasn't quite up to the biggest step of his lifetime.
He never did walk that afternoon, but I learned through surf-side intel the next morning, that the Baby Jake had figured it all out overnight, and was now terrorizing coffee tables and anything that dared sit atop them.
I’m an old man and see things through worn eyes. I am slowing down, while God willing, Jake will spend the next many years of his life getting up to speed, before settling on a cruising altitude that suits his fancy.
I saw a wonderful thing on the beach that day as a baby stretched out toward boyhood.
When I returned to my research, and crashed into a couple of news sites, I saw some truly awful things. I saw financial aid being pulled that would have gone to help starving children, who very well could have been Jake had he been on the other side of the ocean he now toddled on.
I saw the ugly, abominable, orange man making a mockery of good and decency, while banging around in the knee-deep slop where he had chosen long ago to spend his worthless life.
I put my phone down and cursed that moment, before returning to the spot where Jake had grown wings.
This was the moment I would feast on.
These things replenish us. They fortify us, and give us the strength to go forward on our own two, blistered feet.
We can stand watch against the evil in our lives and celebrate the wonderful things.
In fact, we must …
- (D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
