Looking Back

The boys are 6 and 8 these days, but this poem made me think back to the early years when they were learning so much, so quickly. Every phase in a child's life is special, but there is something particularly magical about a child at around age one. The poem, by Joelle Biele, explores the age of 14 months when toddlers are testing the world around them. Here's the poem, and some pictures of the boys at that age.

To Katharine: At Fourteen Months

All morning, you've studied the laws

of spoons, the rules of books, the dynamics

of the occasional plate, observed the principles

governing objects in motion and objects

at rest. To see if it will fall, and if it does,

how far, if it will rage like a lost penny

or ring like a Chinese gong--because

it doesn't have to--you lean from your chair

and hold your cup over the floor.

It curves in your hand, it weighs in your palm,

it arches like a wave, it is a dipper

full of stars, and you're the wind timing

the pull of the moon, you're the water

measuring the distance from which we fall.

Ethan at fourteen months

Noah at fourteen months