We recently started purchasing avocados from Trader Joes. It started when we were at Linda’s and she had served a Caesar salad with avocados in it and we were struck that we could buy these wonderful treats ourselves and do what we wanted with them. The two basic uses for an avocado around the house are in a salad or in a quickly made guacamole. In general if an avocado is on a menu somewhere at a restaurant I will go for that food. At fancy restaurants the avocado likes to live with the best foods. My favorite tuna tartar from Cuchi Cuchi comes jumbled together in a cylinder with avocado. A burger is always better with the southwestern style adding the avocado. Even the lowly working class burrito makes itself a staple with the thwack splattering green onto an abstract canvas of black, brown, white, and red before the canvas gets rolled and covered in modern silver foil. I can’t have a tailgate football party without the guacamole from Whole Foods and it is my sincere hope that as I experiment in my own home with the avocado that I can create a fresh and tasty food as good as the plastic containers full. Even this morning, during brunch with Lynne and her friend Dave at Lineage, I ordered a breakfast dish with eggs over black beans with a nice mound of avocado in the corner of the dish.

Mr. Wanda, a tall African man with a deep voice, a square high hairdo, and a curly beard was our traveling chef on the safari we took in Tanzania. Among the many things he provided us to eat from park to park were large salads filled with avocados, onions, and tomatoes. A perfect vegetable can be purchased hard in an African marketplace, then tied to the roof of a Land Rover, only to be removed strategically to always have the perfect soft flavor each day for a week. That was one of the luxuries about being on safari. We had a personal chef traveling with us and most meals included a very generous portion of avocado in the salad.

I have lately noticed that watching Madeline grow reminds me of our trip through the Serengeti, Ngoro-Ngoro crater, and Lake Manyara. At first when we would see a bird or animal we’d get excited and try to take pictures, and stare for an hour. It didn’t matter too much whether Kennedy, our guide, actually knew the proper name for the birds. The important thing was to see some amazing thing we had never experienced before and to observe it long enough that it could become a part of our experience. So with Madeline I have a buzz inside where I am looking every day for something little in her developing process that I hadn’t seen before. At first it was just to see her at all, a real human developed out of nothing, the latest rung on a ladder of evolution above me with everything back to the original primordial ooze descending into the distance behind us. But as she develops we could anticipate an intentional smile, standing up, rolling over, walking in the Bjorn, walking in the woods. This last week I got to see the first giggle and her first solid food going into her mouth.

On our safari in Africa the first time we saw a lion in the tall grass and hot sun it was amazing. We looked for almost an hour. As we drove about we kept seeing the lions each day for four days. After seeing a hundred lions you start to say to yourself – ‘eh, another lion, I’ve seen one of those’. The same is true with the elephants, giraffes, and pelicans – amazing creatures but they appear mundane after four days of spinning around a giant open field. Instead we go off looking for rarer creatures like the cheetah, leopard, or rhinoceros. It is almost impossible not to get sensitized to the novelty of the current wonders and instead go moving towards the next new wonder. So lately Madeline has been smiling often but I am looking for a second giggle, a new tooth, and a purposeful roll. I have to catch myself to stop and just appreciate how far she has come and smile back at her for an hour because happiness in a five month old baby isn’t assured. Plus the best way to get that second giggle is to give a smile a big workout.

I wonder how Madeline sees the world as well now that she has become so aware of things. The smiles must, in part, be due to her own safari of what is now so mundane to me that I have become completely sensitized to it. I can only try to experience the amazement of seeing things for the first time vicariously through her. It is spring now and the crocuses are rising from the ground for the first time in her life. She experienced a cold snow storm as we walked through the windy blowing blizzard to Zathmary’s for a breakfast only a month and a half ago. We eavesdropped on a group of college girls gossiping about an affair that one of their friends was having with a married man while tasting the Zathmary’s breakfast food. Last month suddenly, Zathmary’s closed in all locations. But something new will replace it. We have so much to show Madeline as it gets warmer out. A trip to the zoo to see the giraffe, the gazelle, and the lion is a likely activity.

But while it is still cold out I am guessing that we will move past the banana and rice cereal that we have been feeding her for the past three days and introduce a new food. I saw two foods pictured in the Good Housekeeping guidebook on raising your baby listed as ones to introduce to a baby that I can’t wait to see her eat. The first one were pieces of cheese cut into interesting shapes like a star or triangle. The second one was a light green slice of avocado.