Sam went to the doctor on Monday. Elise and I are proud to report that Sam weighed in at a not too immodest 14 lbs. 3 oz. and I forget how many inches tall he was, but he has shot up to the 90th percentile in height! I'm not kidding. I'm ready to retire and start living off his future NBA salary!
The visit was capped off with Sam's second round of vaccinations. As though the first weren't bad enough...at least, he was young enough that it didn't seem as though he really knew what was going on. Not the case this time around. Not that anyone could really ignore being pinned down by the knees and jabbed in the thigh four times with an 8 inch needle. But Sam was imminently more aware of what is going on around him now then he was then, which made for one frightened little boy.
For the next fifteen minutes, Elise successfully defragged his scrambled mainframe and brought him back from the brink of hysteria. Most of the rest of the afternoon was spent in a terror-induced, semi-comatose stupor, eyes glazed, nostrils running, low-decibel moaning, etc. (okay, maybe it wasn't that bad...) But by the end of the day, the Sam we have grown to know and love returned, no worse for wear save for a low-grade fever. We had our boy back again. And if he recalled the morning's trauma, he didn't let on, and if he held either of us responsible for the torture we had not-so-willingly subjected him to, he had, by then, forgiven us whole-heartedly.
Neither Elise nor I are deign to flatter ourselves and presume that Sam's disposition is somehow a learned response to our interactions with him over course of the past four months. I have to dig through the deep, deep recesses of my gray matter and exhume 9th grade literary arts from my brain, but I recall William Golding exploring the true, base nature of man in his novel "The Lord of the Flies", posing the question: Is man fundamentally good or evil? When stripped of the extrinsic influences which mold and govern man, i.e. laws, customs, tradition, etc. will he reveal himself to be a fundamentally good and righteous person or will he de-evolve into a savage beast driven by instinct?
I can't look at Sam and not know the answer to this question. Especially when he forgives Elise and I for handing him over to that nurse (even if he doesn't know it's for his own good) so easily. One may posit that he is only a baby, but if I had done that to Kitty, he wouldn't have spoken to me for 3 weeks....and that's a cat.
I guess William Golding didn't have any children.
Fact check: He had two, Judy and David (they must have been monsters!)
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