Thunder and a Full Moon

I have a new friend.

His name is Joshua. He was born on a day when rain darkened the sky and thunder rolled through the clouds, drumming in the presence of a new baby. When the storm had marched on, a full moon shone down, filling the night with an iridescent glow.

It was a time of high drama over the City of Dreams, as well it should have been for a moment so significant. Joshua is, after all, destined for great things.

He indicated as much as I held him in my arms on the third floor of West Hills Hospital, 7 pounds 14 ounces of life and wisdom. Like Plato, he asked questions, and like Aristotle, he listened.

We communicated in the way that adults employ with their new friends, a link that is instantly established not in spoken words but in a manner that transcends speech. I can’t explain it, but does such a moment really need explaining?

He asked the nature of the world into which he was being born, and I said, “Look around you.”

I don’t know that babies could ever have a better support system than Joshua. Pride and love glowed in the eyes of his parents, his sister and his brother, and in the eyes of those of other generations to whom new life will always be a wonder.

“Yes,” Joshua said. “I see.” Then he said, “But what about the rest of the world?”

*

Oh, Joshua.

It is at once a world of wonder and danger, of thunder and full moons. Humanity remains as unsettled as the air that vibrates in a storm, and as dominating as a moon that rules the night.

In practical terms, that means governments are still killing each other for God and country in battles I’m sure God never intended, over land that ought to belong to everyone. Fools and maniacs call for blood, and the people follow like mindless packs of hungry wolves.

We continue to honor instincts rooted in our predatory past, Joshua, in that dark time before human history. While the brain has become more complex, the abstractions of compassion and patience still elude us.

We are no closer to a peaceful world than we were in your father’s time and in my father’s time. Violence chains us to the past. We are prisoners of our history.

Having said that, small boy, I also promise days of laughter and fulfillment as you journey over the hills and into the forest.

To the extent that we’re willing, we create individual destinies apart from the world’s savageries, and are capable of shaping the misty qualities of our ambition into firm and shining substance.

Resist the urge to ignore. Never look the other way. Involve yourself.

*

We had a good talk, Joshua and I.

And as we pondered the world, I rocked him gently and watched as his hand reached out, touching the new place in his existence, leaving a handprint on the stormy air.

Then he slept.

There is so much more I can tell him, and as the years pass, I will. I’ll describe the heady nature of success and the deep pain of failure, so he’ll know the faces of both.

I’ll take him on walks up the trails that surround our home and point out the trees and the horizons. I’ll walk him in the sun so that he will know warmth and in the rain so he can throw back his head and open his mouth and taste the distance.

I’ll show him the ocean, where my concept of endlessness began. And I’ll tell him how I crossed that ocean to face a war, where my concept of endlessness ended.

Being a boy of keen awareness, Joshua will, of course, learn without me. His parents will teach him, and so will his brother and sister. He will learn in school and learn in life. He will absorb the messages that are transmitted from a thousand different sources and filter from them the essence of knowledge that leads to achievement.

I’ll tell him stories and take him to places in the imagination where trolls and poets live, and to corners of the mind where the wind hides.

But my real job for now is just to hold him in my arms and feel the warmth of new life against the cooling fabric of an older life. My real job is to dream with him, because it’s what I do best. My real job is to condense reams of advice and oceans of experience into the simplicity of a single syllable.

My real job is to hold my new grandson close and whisper to him the most powerful of all words: “Care.” That’s the best I can offer.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com