Children

Keep Smiling

by Samuel Dumas 
09/08/19
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I met a baby at our graduation this past June. I leveled my face toward his and said, "Hi! I see you have a new baby-brain." That seemed to excite him. He smiled with baby-new eyes back at me, his tiny palms tightly surrounding air as if he knew now—after only two month-moments of breathing—that it was air that was to be highly prized; and that breathing and air worked great together; and that if you keep trying hard enough, words will eventually break out of your lungs. But all he could manage at that stage was to wind orate with his little mouth, thrust his clutched hands outward on both sides of his little tyke-of-a-body and kick his legs vigorously at me.  

Again, I googled my face close, enjoying all of his miniature Spiderman movements which surprisingly had expulsed in response several googol-goos from some unused part of my man frame. "And you smile a lot too. Good!” I complimented, the exclamation point on the word good almost landing on a soprano’s high note, and that really set his bright eyes and appendages moving even more wildly.

While I famed for a second on his infectious glee, the thoughts in my inner man reveled on: “Keep smiling, little man, because smiling makes your brain grow faster. And after you learn to walk, don’t forget to smile at all the bugs you see; and all the colors on the toys you beep; and all the fragile flowers you investigate; and then later, all the books you will finger-drive through; and all the faces you’ll know, and all the buses you’ll ride; so that your brain will keep expanding until it is a man-brain, and then, after all this, you will surely be able to clutch the breath of life firmly in both of your homunculan hands, and with God’s help, do a lot of good in this world."

[A moment is technically classified as 90 seconds. So, a month-moment—since babies just seem to hold their age so well—was fabricated into my estimation of his age so that it covered  2 to 3 months. Man-brain is usually achieved around 12 years. Homunculan, go here: Wikipedia, psychology, homunculus.]

—Dumas fils