Note: I posted about Sean's impending birth on March 6th, but he was actually born March 1st. Since the equinox was on the 20th (I'm posting one day early), just like this year, that means he was almost three weeks old at Ostar, a difference that matters at that age. -D.
Steve's baby is entirely cute. You'd think that wouldn't need saying, given that human babies essentially define cuteness, but it's hard not to. The reason I can speak authoritatively on Baby Sean is that I met him today. He was born at the beginning of the month after THREE DAYS of labor, and his first day out among people was today, at Ostar.
It was Steve's first day back, too. He and Sarah, his wife, and the baby all arrived this morning, right at the end of breakfast. The whole place went silent for announcements right as they walked in, and Steve and Sarah looked pretty confused for a few seconds, before they figured out why everybody had stopped talking. When the head waiter asked for announcements, Steve raised his hand.
"It's a boy," he said. "His name is Sean." And everyone went wild, clapping and cheering.
We'd known that, though. Security Joe didn't stay the whole time, but he kept visiting, as did Sarah's family, during the labor, and he told us about the birth. But we couldn't not cheer.
"Anyone else?" asked the head-waiter. We all laughed.
"You rather stole my thunder," complained Charlie, standing up. "Anyone up for an egg-hunt?"
On Ostar, as you may remember, we hold the egg hunt, which involves looking for real, active nests (not necessarily eggs) and taking photos of them. We hunt in teams of two, and whichever team takes the best pictures of the most nests wins. There's a prize, usually some kind of serious, egg-themed art. I've been on the winning team twice, not that I'm all that better than the other naturalists on campus, but the first time I won because I got a head-start finding nests (at Charlie's suggestion) and also deliberately partnered with an excellent photographer. The second time I got lucky in that one of the other two really good teams got points deducted and the other had a malfunctioning camera.
This time, I wasn't going to compete at all, because I helped organize the hunt. Charlie had me do all the preparation (making sure we had enough working cameras, and so forth) as well as helping judge the pictures. He still worked as the public face of the contest, though, making the announcement, handing out cameras, and presenting the slide show of pictures and the prizes afterwards. He didn't give me any credit. When I helped judge before, in my fourth year as a novice, he didn't give me credit, either, and I wondered why. I thought maybe it was to keep me from standing out among the other students in a negative way, like a teacher's pet, or something. Now, I don't wonder. I know.
Charlie uses his workshops and activities to let yearlings get to know him. All the masters need to do something like that, so that students can make informed decisions about whom to approach for the kinds of conversations that eventually lead to choosing masters in the various areas. With Charlie, it's even more important that he show himself off, because he's not really comfortable with people he doesn't know and tends to growl at people.
One of the reasons Charlie heads up the egg hunt is so that yearlings will think "oh, year, Charlie's the one with the egg hunt." I don't need advertising, therefore I didn't get credit. Neither do the half-dozen other spies he sends out in secret to make sure nobody harasses the wildlife in the course of taking pictures. You get points deducted for that, and the secret spies make it seem like Charlie has eyes and ears everywhere.
But when Steve returned, Charlie pulled me aside and asked me to partner with Steve. As you may recall, he is now Steve's master, but has delegated most of Steve's instruction to me. I'm learning how to be someone's master, and Steve is learning how to not be angry all the time. We've had a few conversations, over the past three weeks, about what that's going to mean and how it's going to work, and I think I understand.
I approached Steve and offered my services as egg-hunt partner.
"We're not going to win, though," I warned him. "I'm judging, so it would look pretty bad if I won."
"That's ok," said Steve, "I wasn't going to win, anyway."
And it's true, he wasn't. He's not a bad photographer, and he likes the out-of-doors, but he knows almost nothing about it. He can't tell a spruce from a pine, and can't see a drey if he's looking right at it. He's a smart man, and there's nothing wrong with his eyes, natural history just isn't a priority for him. And that's ok, really.
So, we spent the morning with me teaching him how to notice things. Like, we'd see a bird and I'd ask him what he thought it was doing and why, and we'd watch it for a while. Sometimes you can find nests by watching birds, since they act certain ways when they have nests or are near their nests. Or I'd coach him through spotting old nests, which are useless for the contest but easier to spot this time of year, because there's more of them and because the leaves they were originally hidden behind are off the trees at the moment. We only got two pictures, neither of them firsts, but we got no points deducted and he said he had a great time. It was fun.
Sarah and Sean spent most of the morning sitting on the Mansion porch, wrapped in a blanket, enjoying the sunshine with Charlie, who loves babies. A lot of people took pictures of them.
There's no rule that the nests have to belong to birds, after all. Insect egg masses and boxes of kittens have been legitimate entries, and Steve and I appear to have been the only people who didn't think to include a picture of the human baby in the nest of his mother's arms. Charlie let those pictures stand and he and I awarded points as appropriate. Some of the pictures got a lot of extra points for artistic merit. Some we removed from the slide show, at Sarah's request, because they depicted her bare, nursing breast, or because the people taking the picture hadn't said hi to her first or asked her permission. We deducted points from those pictures, as per the rules of the contest, for "annoying the wildlife."
"I never thought I'd like being treated like an animal," commented Sarah, "but from Charlie it's a definite mark of respect."
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