“Twwwr, chi-ha chi-ha” chirp the birds outside our temporary lodging in Santa Cruz. We’d left our Redwood City home to stay on the other side of the mountains, near our daughter’s family because she’d soon give birth to her third child. Today, that sojourn is to end, and so much else, precious and one-time, ceases too. Close watching of a baby changing from day to day will end. We’ve seen his ten-pound body and chubby arms lengthening as they unfurl. Within days, he’s seemed inches longer than when he emerged, all tightly curled up.

We load our suitcases into our trunk, lock good our temporary home, drive the ten minutes to my daughter’s home, and I’m again startled. Today the dramatic change is in his face. Previously, his lids were squeezed tight for most of his waking hours. When he nursed or yelled, we couldn’t see his eyes. Today a first—his blue pupils show, both in pleasure or want as he feeds or cries.

His dad removes the infant’s clothes and puts him on what appears to be a red plastic hat turned upside down. It’s designed as a miniature potty for those pursuing “elimination communication.” Potty training an infant is not infeasible or abnormal. See https://tinyurl.com/mp7dhe88. Anyway, as his pudgy body becomes naked, Micah turns furious, a “Mini-tragedy,” as his mother calls these episodes.

Since my babes were born three-plus decades ago, I haven’t spent so much time with a newborn. Not being exhausted or in demand as The Mother, I observe my grandchild in a less pressing way. I think about how much a baby must accustom himself to a new environment, with no choice in the matter. Micah stayed long in confinement, requiring knees curled to his chest—necessary gymnastics for fitting inside a womb; then suddenly, contractions thrust him out into chilly air. Sure boundaries lifted when propelled from effortless feeding through a cord to gripping and sucking for nourishment, from the gentle rocking of warm amniotic fluid to uncertainties and indignity outside. His mother’s soft tissue supplied the only container he knew, but now there is no safe and muted enclosure, no separation from the outside world. He’s been forced into immediate contact. Cotton fabric encloses his legs and arms. Bass and soprano voices directly enter his ear canals. A griddle clangs on the iron spokes of a stove. Police siren interrupts the muffled domestic noises, as do the occasional enormous gruff barks of his household’s protective dog. Oh what helplessness a babe must feel at the lifting of security and so much sensory input imposed on him—so life outside begins.

But good things also accompany the entrance to the world: this grandchild of mine has come to know the tender timbre of mother and father’s tones. The gush of milk from a breast into his mouth. The gentleness of a palm on his neck supporting his head, our coos at his plummy, broad cheeks. And he will know joys in turning his head toward a light and making out a face. Or, in time, rolling over, or grasping a carrot or a rattle, or putting hands and feet on the floor and crawling—compulsion of motion. These days that will come, I pray. Many days will come.