Tuesday morning

Looking back at The New Yorker covers.

These two covers are from the magazines that were issued during the weeks my sweet sons Brandon and Shanan were born. I think they are beautiful. The New Yorker Rebound.

April 1973

Brandon was born on April 20th 1973.

This first cover makes me happy. It is filled with horizontality and joy. Rows and rows of buildings stacked up upon each other. Rows of buildings leaning on each other for comfort. So many windows for looking out and looking in. And then there are the green green trees that live among the buildings and look, from afar, like lace adornments dispersed every so carefully by a thoughtful one. Looking like honeycomb [apartments]. Lots of opportunities.

Brandon from the moment he was born. A placid and content observer. Brandon pondered how everything in his world worked. Aways watching and trying to understand. A content little boy who purposefully dropped cheerios on the floor while he leaned over his highchair tray to watch them fall and squeaked with joy when we counted how many he had dropped. A curious little boy who liked to watch the worker bees that gathered by the flowery hedges in our yard. A little boy who, many times, held bees in his hand bravely so he could study their lives. Always and still loving the science of life.

September 1975

Shanan was born on September 24th 1975.

This second cover makes me happy, too. Horizontality and joy abound here. Lots of sky [mostly sky, in fact] made from quiet sweeps of muted tones: browns and pale pale greens and rusty oranges. The colors of this unthought of sky reflecting back the definitive terms of the russet fields. This beautiful and open sky stands ready, it seems to shout. And a young rider makes his way through the the tall rustic grasses on his bike. Back straight. Eyes forward. Seeming to be fixed on his destination.

Shanan from the beginning. Never sitting still. Needing always to get somewhere. And to figure out these travels on his own terms. First scooting across the floor instead of crawling. Sitting up this way rather than moving about on all fours gave him a taller perspective on things it seems. Then running everywhere, sometimes without taking a hand when he ran/crossed a street. Later, riding AC Transit [with Willie Mae Ellington and then on his own] all over the bay area to authenticate the maps he had consulted. And, when he was still quite young, traveling on BART to the end of the line for making even more maps and charts of his travels. Always traveling still.