A Chubby Cherub

As funny as it seems, I was once a chubby cherub, a 1950s Raphael, who weighed thirty pounds at a year. There’s a picture in our sitting room that proves it, a smiling baby of nine months propped up by his own sweet girth, rolls at his wrists, and a twinkling smile. No wings — they never quite developed. There was only a minor scapular deformity, or perhaps conformity, to round out my enormity, as I rode ’round the room on my mother’s sturdy hip. My first sip of beer came when? At two? three? four? How cute I was with a trace of foam on my lip! Yet without the picture here to prove it, how would I ever know? True, I might have been told. But such things can be forgotten, and at best are subject to change. And since then, how many times has this old body been replaced? Clearly, it was, and can never be, me. Still, it’s a lovely form of dress. Like a robin’s, or panther’s, or elephant’s, like an ant’s or egret’s. But I digress. Yesterday afternoon, shortly after we’d set out on a walk, we saw a very little girl running in the street, racing back and forth to where her friends and siblings were playing. Her movements showed total freedom, no hindrances at all. Even gravity had to smile. She’s probably outgrown her clothes by now. A year ago she toddled. Her mother waddled, her father rolled out from beneath the pickup he was fixing. Her uncle was a grand old man of twenty-two. Grandma lives in Nebraska, where Grandpa gives her problems. He thinks he’s a cherub. Insists on it. Threatens to paint pictures of himself on the ceiling. All of this was perfectly visible as we turned the corner and walked towards the setting sun. A year ago we were older. Now we’re young. I have no proof, of course. But you do have my word.

[ 2035 ]