June 30, 2008

To: Austin
From: Whatever Goofy Name You Want to Call Me

Shhhh. Don't wake up if you're taking a nap.

It's OK.

At my age, I'm sort of used to speaking without anyone listening.

Besides, you can always read this later, maybe a couple three years from now when you've learned to read like the prodigy I'm sure you are.

For the time being, your job is to sleep, slurp, stretch, stare and sleep, in that circular rhythm of a healthy baby's life.

I just wanted to send you a quick column to thank you for being such a good sport the Saturday night before last.

Granted, I don't have a lot of recent experience with newborns. I helped raise just one child, your father. That was 31 years ago.

Still, I don't think it's every 2-week-old who'd ride his stroller so confidently into Venice Beach, especially without his parents in tow.

Your San Diego grandparents – you haven't given us our official baby names yet – were your very first sitters and, in retrospect, we probably went a little gonzo in our choice of destination.

It was more Dr. Hunter S. Thompson than Dr. Spock.

But don't worry. Secret Service agents could not have been more vigilant in protecting you. We'd both take a bullet, or a runaway beach cruiser, for you.

A less worldly baby might have been alarmed at his first exposure to the chaotic sights and sounds of a summer sunset in the city – quacking ducks on the canals, throaty Harley-Davidsons near the boardwalk, raucous crowds spilling out of restaurants.

But you were so cool in your brand-new outfit – dark-green T-shirt and light-brown cargo pants. Strapped into your sleek black ride, you drew more pouty smiles than could Sandy, the grinning golden retriever you haven't met yet.

You looked right back at the gapers, your eyes as round as bright blue dimes, lapping up the human comedy like audio-visual milk.

My, how comfortably you reclined, a Churchillian yogi deep in baddha konasana, the soles of your feet caressing each other, knees spread, a portrait of beatific calm. (Your grandmother teaches yoga, and she's in awe of your natural poses.)

It was as if you were born to mingle in the madding urban crowd.

Or that's how it seemed, alone and footloose with our first grandchild.

Looking back over your miraculous life, I have to say your sense of timing has been superb thus far.

For one, we will always associate your June birthday with a possibly history-changing event.

Your San Diego grandmother was a passionate “Obamamama” during the months we waited for you to arrive.

During the presidential primary campaign, Barack Obama liked to observe that a baby born the same day he announced his candidacy would be running around by then.

For us, your time in your mother's tummy was a kind of clock ticking in tandem with the tense gestation of the primary race.

On June 3, the last primary election night, Obama wrapped up the Democratic nomination.

Your grandmother flew over the Milky Way – and ordered your “Obama '08” onesie.

  

Just 36 hours later, your four grandparents gathered in the waiting room of UCLA's Santa Monica hospital.

We knew you were going to be a boy, but the mystery was what you would look like and what your first two names would be.

Suddenly, a flurry of terse text messages arrived from the delivery room, sent by your father:

Going in . . . he's out . . . 8 pounds 3 ounces . . . huge hands.

In good time, we were ushered in to be formally introduced to Austin Engel Jenkins, a sturdy baby with the fingers of a pianist or a basketball player.

Change We Can Believe In.

That was the motto of the Obama campaign. Someday you may study that slogan in a history class.

As befits my trade, one practiced in one form or another by four straight generations of Jenkins men, I have my doubts about any politician of any party changing much of anything, least of all politics.

But in the Santa Monica hospital, that skeptical habit of mind was blown away in a whirlwind of relief and hope.

Looking up at glistening wet eyes, you were the change this old newspaperman could believe and believe and believe in.

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Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.