Letter to a Great Grandson A Message of Love, Advice, and Hopes for the Future

Preface This is not a letter to a little boy. It is a letter to one human male of different ages: a youngster just able to read, a young adult, a middle-aged man, and an old man. If he reads it at each of those four stages of life (and I would like it if he did), he will get something different from it each time.I grant that at times I appear to be talking to him while he is an infant, and I asked my wife why I would do this. She said, "Simple. It's because he is so cute."Okay.I can't know the events of his life, but I will be relating many of mine, and interspersing fragments of advice, opinion, prediction (attempts to picture what I think his world will be like at different dates in his lifetime), plus personal feelings. This document will be long for a letter -- short for a book. I can't mail it into the future, but published books can sit patiently on shelves, and I count on his parents to let him know it exists. I will, of course, personally hand him the first copy, but its chances of surviving the gauntlet all family documents must run to become valuable make its publication desirable. These documents face six steps of evolution: (1) important, (2) filed, (3) forgotten, (4) trash, (5) rediscovered (sometimes), (6) treasured. Letter to a Great Grandson Dear Alexander, Two weeks ago, as I write this, you came into the world, a little astonished and distressed, which is quite natural, considering how we all arrive -- naked, cut off from the nourishment of umbilical blood and the warmth and comfort of the womb, and thrown suddenly into a place of bright lights, loud noises, cold air (which must now rush into lungs never before used -- air containing, along with nitrogen and some trace gases, oxygen, known to be the most corrosive gas there is), and the harsh new sounds of voices no longer muffled by abdominal walls and amniotic fluid -- voices trying to express love and protection, but not immediately recognized as such. And very soon you were hungry. Without any knowledge of where the restaurants are. But like all of us at the very beginning, you took it in stride, with the almost infinite capacity newborns have to deal with frustration and discomfort -- and the merciful amnesia that keeps it from being so traumatic it scars you for the rest of your life. Nature is kind, basically, and I want you to realize this. At various times in your life you will not think so, but it's true. Only years and years later will you somehow remember that you came here "trailing clouds of glory," and that your home is a cosmos that harbors no hostility toward you. My hope is that you will come to know the truth of this early enough to enhance the quality of your life. You are actually the first real newborn I ever saw. I gazed on you about seven minutes after you emerged from your mother's insides. When my own children were born I was in a waiting room and didn't get to see them until about a half hour had gone by and they were all cleaned up, and not red and wrinkled. They were very young babies, but no longer newborns. I saw you when you were very little, very unhappy, and very red and wrinkled. But you had a good voice and powerful lungs, which knew how to function the minute you got here. And in less than a half hour you were a clean and hungry baby.Now, having settled into the routine of your full-time employment -- sucking and swallowing, emptying breasts and bottles and filling diapers -- you are on the standard track of development. You will gradually come to log the sights and sounds that will allow recognition of faces and voices -- your mother's and your father's, and those of others you know to be relatives and friendly -- and finding the difference between you and not-you. This is not easy, but you will stumble onto how you can move an arm or leg in the direction you want -- in a blinding flash you will know that a desiredDowns, Hugh is the author of 'Letter to a Great Grandson A Message of Love, Advice, and Hopes for the Future', published 2004 under ISBN 9780743247238 and ISBN 074324723X.