Original sin, part II

After reading yesterday's post, L. told me that perhaps I was coming down a little hard on Cleo. Evil? Ahab? Really? I mean, she's only six months old. And, yes, well, that's true. But then, L. hadn't yet come face to face with the black sludge (as I did, again, at 4:40 last night). Sure, we all know, in the abstract, that Everyone Poops, but let's just say that infants have a way of doing so that's rather endearing. And Cleo, I guess, is no longer an infant.

But that's just a long way, really, of saying that I'd meant yesterday's post to be lighthearted. And lighthearted for a reason, for shortly after Cleo's passage from infancy we both came face to face with something much more sobering than a soiled diaper. With temperatures in the mid-50s, and an afternoon before us, we walked over to Whole Foods, for some salmon. Nothing very special there; that grocery store is, for reasons largely geographic (we're hemmed in on the other three sides by large roads), a cross between an oasis and an amusement park. But yesterday afternoon, it was also somehow on edge. As Cleo and I neared the checkout counter, I saw a number of the cashiers conferring, and standing rather nervously next to their registers. And then I looked down - Cleo, in her stroller, was simply looking at the coffee counter, as far as I could tell - and saw a man sprawled on the floor, on his back, with a halo of blood around his head.

He'd fallen, apparently, and hit his head on some sharp surface. I didn't pursue details - why add to an awful scene? - but as we walked to the far end of the store, we heard two employees note that he had moved, and was thus alive. The manager called, over the p.a. system, for a doctor. And a few minutes later, as we left in a stunned sort of haze, the EMT team arrived in a blare of sirens. I don't think we'll ever know, for sure, the rest of the story.

But why, regardless, do such things happen? What logic, what existential or religious logic, could explain a man doing something as benign as shopping suddenly coming face to face with death? As I noted yesterday, some of our most cherished stories emphasize the sudden appearance of threats, or mortality, in our lives. Snakes wander into Hercules' crib; the Fates hover over the threads; Deus vult. But, still, whichever narrative you choose, the basic question remains: Why?

This father does not yet have an answer to that question. But I'm open to suggestions. And I'm open to the idea that suggestions can occur, like the tragedies that necessitate them, in the most unexpected places. A few hours after we left Whole Foods, I took Cleo to the doctor, for the last of her 6-month immunizations. As we made our way towards the building, we passed a woman, who looked at Cleo, and simply said, aloud, "Look at God's precious angel."

Serpents, angels: we navigate a seemingly pedestrian world that is interrupted, occasionally, by the possibility that we see only the surface of a much larger whole.