It is hard to convey the range of emotions from the Holiday weekend. It included the sublime and the astonishment of new life, bright with promise, and the ridiculous with some old reprobates at the Elk’s Club in hipster Ferndale, Michigan.

Too much time in the car, of course. I had not planned ahead to get an airline ticket, since no one knew when my grandson was going to decide to be born. Despite the best efforts of medical staff, he made his own decision to come into the world, on his timing.

My son said none of us have ever been very good at taking direction, and he is continuing the tradition.

Without knowing when he would be available to introduce myself, I just decided to take off in the Panzer and head up to suburbs of the big Rust Belt City.

It did not seem to be a big deal- I have driven that route a hundred times or more, usually in one eight or nine hour shot. But this was different. I sense my lifelong partnership with the wheel to begin to fade. Sure, I am still doing the chess game of the traffic up ahead, but I sense my ability to concentrate the way I used to is waning. Back in the day, we would jump in the Caprice Classic sedan and drive from Ann Arbor to Salt Lake City, straight through.

Now I can only get to Newton Falls, OH, on the way from Arlington to suburban Detroit. Oh well, I suppose entropy (and gravity) always win.

So there was that, and then there was the compound miracle that is the most amazing adventure in which I ever participated.

The start of it was, of course, the birth of my sons. I was fortunate to be there- right there- for both. I was not there for the birth of my grandson, but this was close enough. I pulled into town in the early afternoon and checked with my son to see if the timing was propitious for a visitation. It was, so I was over to the house like a flash.

I came in through the front door, and there he was. My son handed him over right there. I looked down. He was asleep, determinedly so, and apparently intending to grow beyond his modest birth-weight.

My boys were both large- the older one was over ten pounds at birth, so this was a baby smaller than I recall, though the muscle memory was fresh enough. I took the swaddled child in the familiar football carry, and gazed at his angelic face. I think I sat down; I don’t know.

His tiny fingers fascinated me, and his grip, when he roused from the depth of his dream, was firm. His hearing was good, since he reacted to kitchen sounds, and when he deigned to open his eyes, they were the darkest azure.

I talked to his parents about the usual stuff that surrounds the common execution of miracles. Only parents really know those things, the scheduling of feedings, the surreal nature of the change of the couple from individual components to a single corporate entity. The intense and fundamental nature of the love we hold for these tiny arrivals that surpasses the imagination.

So, I could go all Grandpa on you- post a gazillion pictures, daily fawning updates, all that, but it is not my story to tell, and there is a new sensitivity abroad in the land. This is the business of our kids in dealing with their kids, and what they choose to share about it is their business and theirs alone.

Don’t for an instant think that I am not the proudest grandfather in North America- but I am, in contrast to the guy who spews pictures and stories into the blogosphere daily. I was in the car for a long time, and I listen to the satellite radio.

One of the stories was an alarming one about our asshole adversaries in Syria and Iraq. These new barbarians are tech savvy, in addition to being blood-thirsty religious extremists. The London lone-wolf jihadis who attacked and beheaded Fusilier Lee Rigby are a case in point, as is the asshole who shot Corporal Nathan Cirillo a few days after Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was run down by a car driven with homicidal intent by another newly-converted murdering fool.

The news reports suggest that the contemptible geeks of ISIS are using social media to target American soldiers and military people, trolling through the pages to find personal and unit pages to determine who is deployed, where they live, perhaps to attack the families of those who serve.

How do you compare the pride and humility you feel about the miracle of new life, a new person who carries part of you forward into eternity and contrast it with the conduct of callous murderers who delight in the ending of miracles?

By the time I dove through the rain and the fog on Pennsylvania’s central plateau, the tunnel under Alleghany Mountain the truckers call “Hole in the Wall,” and started down the long slope to the Potomac, I was pretty sure that my first stop was going to be Facebook, and a scrub of my personal data.

My personal information now indicates that I was born in 1905. I did not go to high school, nor attend college. I have worked nowhere. I don’t live anywhere, either, except maybe in my car. And here is something you might not have known- those wonderful people at Facebook transmit your location, unless you turn it off. I turned it off.

Twitter? Same deal, but they are kind enough to make you have to opt-in to send your location.

The really cute picture of my grandson with his eyes open, gazing into our eyes? Sorry. Or the one of that perfect child angelic in the circular basket, up to his tiny shoulders in the big striped sock that makes my heart break with his perfect beauty?

Sorry. He has a name and he has a lot of pictures. I am just not going to post them. When he is eighteen he can make his own preferences known. Until then, what his parents want to share about the coolest baby in Christendom is completely up to them.

It is a new world out there, isn’t it? Social media was pretty cool for about fifteen minutes. Now, it is just another threat vector.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303