New Life

Baby Tom

I'm a big softie, really. Yes, despite my prediliction for rammy music (many thanks to Dearest mjrc for adding that word to my lexicon), I'm a sentimental fool. I cry during movies - I'm talking brimming eyes, mind you, not big, bawly sobs. But still, most unmanly behaviour. What turns on my tap? John Merrick lying down to sleep in The Elephant Man; Rutger Hauer's dying speech in Blade Runner; the love story between Ralph/Bernadette and Bob the mechanic in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; the final exchange between Joel and Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Dumbo's separation from his mother in, well, Dumbo. You see, I'm a big girl's blouse.

I'm particularly sentimental when it comes to newborns. It probably has a tremendous amount to do with the memories and emotional afterimages of the unbounded, exhilarating joy that coursed through me at the precise moments my own two children were born. To me there is nothing as wondrous and deserving of celebration than a new life. So you can imagine how thrilled and misty-eyed I was at the news that Dearest S, one of our closest friends from England, gave birth just about a week ago to wee Baby Tom. Apparently the birth went smoothly and was about as au naturel as one could expect. And I'm happy to deploy the cliche that mother and baby are doing just fine.

Baby Tom has landed himself in a most wonderful, loving family that includes Daddy A, Big Brother F, Older Sisters E & S, a vivacious Maternal Gramdmother, and a Maternal Grandfather who is both the very model of a modern Major General (Ret.) and a keen Rolling Stones fan. Tom arrived at his family down a long, convoluted, and at times bumpy road of the heart. But arrive he did, and we are all so happy that he has.

Baby Tom's birthdate bodes well for his future musical taste, as he shares it with the incomparable Leonard Cohen, Oasis bad boy Liam Gallagher, and Motörhead drummer Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor. Oh, yeah! And so to get him started with a suitable soundtrack:

Motörhead - Ace of Spades (buy here)
Oasis - Supersonic (buy here)
Leonard Cohen - First We Take Manhattan (buy here)

And for Maternal Grandfather:

Rolling Stones - Get Off Of My Cloud (buy here)