My Friend, Gabriel

My friend Shara tells me I don't reveal much of myself in my writing on this blog. That is mostly purposeful. In an effort to put more of myself into this blog, today I would like to write about her son, who is an amazing personality and my friend in his own right. I introduce him to you now, as you will probably see him surface in this blog from time to time. He is now a bit past two and a half years old, though he is probably about 10 months in this photograph. I see the world's potential in him.

I don't have children, and I was never strongly drawn to them. Oh, sure, I was very fond of certain individuals, but not because they were children per se. I have always pretty much interacted with kids the same way I interact with adults - one by one. So when I was back in San Francisco from Bali one year to sell my line wholesale at the international gift shows, it was a bit of an odd match for me to find myself temporarily living with my friend Shara and her 8-month old baby. She had an extra room, I needed a place to stay, so we figured we could do it for a few months.

I had met Gabriel some months before, when he was sleeping and just sort of laying there like a piece of broccoli as babies do. (In all fairness to Gabriel, he was, after all, asleep.) But how much trouble could he be? I thought. No big deal.

Well, long story short, living with them, Gabriel came to look at me as another person who would comfort him and play with him and love him. And, so, of course, I fell completely in love myself. If he was tired and Shara was typing, he would crawl over to me, boost himself up onto my lap, situate himself and fall asleep. He completely melted my heart.

When I was working on my computer, sometimes he would crawl over and hold up his arms to me, wanting to be picked up. "Up?" I would say. And sure enough, soon he was crawling over, holding up his arms and saying "Ugh! ugh!" until I picked him up. ("Ugh" quickly became "Uppppp".) Of course, then he wanted to play with the computer mouse, which had a red light that fascinated him. I let him and lost a lot of work in the process.

"Up" was his actual first word, but he called Shara "Em" as his first word approximation even before I moved in with them (which was when he was eight months old). He had probably heard the word "Mommy" and this was as close as he could get so young. "Em! Em!" he would call to her. The next word he learned after "Up" was "That". Very smart, because he had picked it up on his own and it was handy for a variety of uses. When he wanted us to pick him up to kiss one of the African masks Shara had on the wall (for some reason still unknown to me, she had taught him to kiss the masks), he would point at it and say, emphatically, "That!" When I took him in his stroller down the street and he wanted to see something closer in the window, he would point and say, "That!" Of course, if we were eating food he wanted to try, we heard, "That!" He thereafter quickly learned to say "MMM!" for food, and would even point at newspaper ads of pizza and say "MMM!" with gusto.

A real San Francisco baby, Gabriel ate burritos before he even quite had teeth. I think he might have been about 10 months when I gave him his first pizza when Shara went out for the evening. She was worried to leave him for even a few hours, as she normally took him everywhere. (That kid had a better social life than I did!) However, that night she came home to find him sitting on my lap eating pizza with tomato sauce smeared all over his face. It's still one of his favorite foods. Hey, I'm not the mom, so I leave the healthy eating to her.

Gabriel continually astounded Shara and I with his feats; often we looked over his head at each other in wide-eyed amazement. Both mentally and physically, he was always months ahead of what he was supposed to be doing according to the baby books. Check out the photo (at left) of him at nine months doing a pull-up on my filing cabinet in an effort to reach the CDs. At nine months, he also learned how to turn light switches on and off when we held him up high enough to reach them. He had a look of concentration as he switched the light on or off, and we clapped and yelled, "Yay!" He would beam a smile and clap in response. We clapped and cheered for all his accomplishments, which may be why he still tends to show off when I am around.

In tune with the people around him, Gabriel has always been empathetic. When other children cried for reasons he could not understand, even at a very young age he would look extremely concerned and try to comfort them. Now that he is a little older than two and a half, he is already beginning to take care of Shara. Shara had a bad cold yesterday, so I stopped by to pick Gabriel up for an evening party of our mutual friends and their children. When we left, Gabriel told Shara, "Mommy, take your medicine." At the party Gabriel received a number of holiday gifts. When I brought him back to his house, the first thing he did was run over to his mother who was lying miserable and sniffly on the couch and proclaim, "Look, Mommy! I brought you something!" And he gave Shara a little stuffed dog he had been given at the party.

So, every now and then, Gabriel and I get together, just the two of us, to go to the movies or to see the sea lions at Pier 39 or take in the aquarium. It's not baby sitting; it's just two old friends spending time together.

As for Shara and Gabriel, they have a close bond that seems very special to me, and I am certain that bond will remain strong and vital throughout their lives. (Though I have a feeling Shara may have her hands full in the teen years!) I can see that Gabriel will grow up to be a strong, compassionate man and a joy to Shara. Together, they embody love.