The Arboretum, Sasha

Sometimes one has to wonder what passes through a baby's brain, when a certain look plants itself on their faces and remains there for more than an hour. My husband and I took the little guy for a stroll in Strybing Arboretum today--on one of the coldest days of the year, but it was the afternoon and we had him well-bundled (and "cold" in San Francisco is nothing compared to "cold" in places like Minnesota or Massachusetts). We put the much-hated winter hat on his head--he tolerated it, but just barely. Then he seemed to become sleepy, with that glazed, fixed look of a baby about to fall asleep--but he never did, not for the next hour and a half. Instead he gazed out at the world with the hat pulled down to his eyebrows and his bomber jacket zipped up to his chin--he seemed content to let his mind drift, to not move for long periods of time, to let his arm trail down out of the carseat/stroller--at one point he leaned forward and let his face rest against the blanket in front of him, not in frustration but in a strange reverie; he also tolerated it when we leaned him back again; he was peaceful about everything and remarkably distant from us; he looked, somehow, like a well-fed, half-drunk Russian nobleman, being carted across a frozen field by servants while his mind reviews the debauch of the night before.