The most significant smiling development recently has been Aunt Judy's blocks. They are second-hand and spongy, decorated
in fading orange, yellow and green. Each block has a bell inside. "I washed them and I was afraid about the bells," said Judy. Alex went bananas for the
blocks. I came into the
hospital room to find his grandma and Judy sitting him up and him holding one of the blocks. I had never seen him hold anything while sitting up before.
Soon the blocks became Alex's first love. If his eyes were roaming we'd shake the bell and he would fix on the block. We'd move the block to the left and his eyes would move left. We'd move it to the right and his eyes would move right. We'd shake it so the bell tinkled and he'd bust into a smile, whapping the mattress of the hospital crib with all four limbs. Just bananas. Pretty soon he'd hiss with delight, because he doesn't laugh yet. "Ah ah ah," Alex would say. Whap whap whap.
wife Jill and I didn't smile much when Alex was born three months premature last June. Mostly I sat by his isolette and let him hold the tip of my finger -- he weighed 21 ounces then -- and as soon as she could get out of her hospital room and come to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Jill sat and cried. On many afternoons since I've gotten Jill on the phone, me at work and she at Alex's bedside, and heard her crying over one of his numbers while she had to watch his chest heave and the retractions bite into his ribcage. "I have to go. I have to get out of here," Jill would say over the phone. There I would sit in the neon of my office, lips numb, imagining my wife crying on the subway.
The doctors and nurses at the first hospital rarely made us smile, so we transferred Alex. The transfer made us smile. Alex couldn't smile much at the time because he had a plastic breathing tube down his throat. But in five days the new hospital got that out.
He may come home soon. Also this hospital has helped link us up with programs - babies born weighing 600 grams, it turns out, are worth more than their weight in benefits. A program with one of the funnier applications was Social Security. SSI interviewed me and mailed back a series of statements about Alex and his life, which I was to sign:
"JILL STIMPSON is interested in ALEXANDER LEE STIMPSON." Agreed.
"ALEXANDER LEE STIMPSON does not owe me any money." Ha.
"He never was married."
"He does not own any type of resource."
If the government paid babies for standing around, like it does some adults, then Alex would be happy and loaded. In the last couple of days he's taken to loving the sensation of stiffening his legs under his hips. I hold him upright under the arms and watch the knees lock into place and the toes dig in, and once he gets the hang of it he can even swing his hands around to play in the spitty shine of his lips. Alex's career in stand-up comedy started with Joann, who spends a lot of time with Alex -- more than I do -- and one afternoon not long ago I came upon her tossing Alex gently into the air. Joann taught him to fly. Joann is a nurse.
"ALEXANDER LEE STIMPSON lives in AN INSTITUTION."
That's not funny. Nor is it as true as it used to be. They prop him semi-upright in his crib, while a machine drips in the first food to hit his stomach since before Christmas. If he can hold it down, the gastroenterologists tell us, they'll try more. Maybe they'll give him a barium test.
They do, and on that morning Alex smiles up a storm on the X-ray table. His fingers scrabble at the camera, then he looks at me upside down and hugs Bully into his mouth. He smiles when he looks at you, he smiles when he doesn't look at you, he smiles and hisses like a homeless person. He also passes the X-ray. Soon we'll talk to the doctors about the last steps before bringing him home. We hope that day is near. In the meantime we go to the institution, brush his lips with the blocks and watch the corners of his mouth fly apart until he's nothing btip of the wet tongue peeks out and he begins to wiggle. Wiggle wiggle wiggle. Whap whap whap goes the arm on the crib mattress. This afternoon Jill gave him plastic keys and he lost all control. He'll laugh soon, the doctors say.
Lately Alex grabs the red dog with the bell when it's time to sleep. He hugs it and licks it. We rock him and pat him until his long, black eyelashes go down. This often happens around seven on a weeknight. Jill and I take that moment to drag ourselves home again. Back to our un-life, when we hope that somewhere in his institution Alex wakes up only to be happy.