He is my boy.  And yes, he’s crawling. 

It started as a stretch a couple days ago.  I told people over the last few weeks that the boy was thinking hard about crawling.  I could watch him thinking about moving.  His eyes followed things he wanted to snatch.  He tracked me or his mother.  He looked out the window, at the bookshelf, over at the swing.  His arms extended and his legs did the same.  His little belly spotted on the carpet and I imagined that if he were in the water, he’d be swimming.  If he were in the air, he’d be flying.  But he wasn’t moving.  He wasn’t crawling, at the time. 

It became a scoot.  His thighs bulged over his little legs.  His knees postured as if to kneel.  He scooted.  Backward.  It was funny.  He wanted to move so he did.  He just moved in the opposite direction he really wanted to.  I laughed.  My wife just smiled and sang that little “Oh, look him” song.  It was hard not to look at him.  He’s cute.  But I never imagined myself sitting and watching a baby sitting in one spot, wanting only to move.  He grunted and grunted.  He looked at me like I was holding his feet or something.

He started to sit up on his own.  He had already been rolling over.  But the day I walked over to the crib and saw him sitting there, like I was late for something, I knew the end was near.  The end of my confidence.  The end of my certainty that he’d be in the same place I put him.  I saw the end coming, the sun setting, the night coming on all those stationary certainties.  The boy would be moving soon. 

I told Dawn.  I told other people.  They confirmed it: he’d be crawling.  And the prophecies came true.  He just started crawling, moving like he was late for a meeting, like he hadn’t seen every spot in our home for the last almost-seven months.