My three-months-old baby spends a good deal of time scrutinizing such objects as the wall or the pillow with such wide-eyed fascination that I feel that I am seriously missing something. What is captivating for me is his gradual emergence as a human. Are you a real person now? I ask him frequently. Or are you still just a little baby? My rule of thumb is that if he erupts in soundless giggle-smiles and flails his arms, then he didn’t truly understand the question and is likely still a baby.

Holden is a good little boy with an excellent demeanor that only twists into full emotional breakdown when he is hungry or exhausted – and occasionally simply when he wakes up. Babies are free to wield this sort of reaction that we as adults are not when starving or tired or awakening to the dreadful news that it is Monday morning. But we must remain calm, stoic, and set about that all is fine. The waiter will get here eventually. Soon I will reach the pillow. Coffee will tide me over until Tuesday.

But, to my real reason for this canon fodder: it’s peculiar to contemplate how babies know absolutely nothing about anything. Their brains are void of facts about the world. Their minds are hollow chambers that slowly become filled with these things. Like, Holden doesn’t even know why Ernest Hemingway chose Ketchum, Idaho to live out his final days. He’s probably never even heard of The Old Man and the Sea. Holden doesn’t even know who Hemingway is!

But it grows steadily more amazing the farther this stream of thought carries you. Not only does he not know Hemingway, or Mordecai Richler, J. K. Rowling, Alice Munro or even George W. Bush (a published “author”) – Holden doesn’t even know what a book is! Even though there are oodles of them on our shelves, including in his very own room.

I’m being mildly sarcastic, but what is amazing is to think of all the great things in life whose existence he will one day discover. Picturebooks. Mysteries. Tall tales from the sea. Song lyrics. A gripping magazine article. Cinema. But much earlier than that, he will eventually recognize his name in the written form, perhaps drawn by me letter by letter in chalk on the back patio.  

And he will learn that you can push chalk in changing directions and make lines and circles and eventually letters. That crayon, markers, pencils and sticks in the sand do the same. He’ll get to know that language of life, the beautiful word, and appreciate a finely-scripted TV comedy, a crafty turn of phrase or the singsong alphabet.

A world of words and treasures awaits babies like mine. Those who are still fact-less.