Packee

I had forgotten how it feels to hold a newborn baby. After all, nearly six years had gone by since the last new grandkid, and my mind had moved on from nursery rhymes to The Hardy Boys and from first steps to dance steps. By every indication, it seemed safe to dispense with the baby toys, the high chair, the toddler bed.

But as it turns out, the sweet song of little people in my life plays on. At the bottom of this page of music, a repeat sign has magically appeared. Baby Packee, born at 8:37 a.m. on Sept. 30, is adding another verse and his own variation to the familiar melody of the past twelve years. I have just returned home from a ten-day stay with him and his family as we all adjust to a family dynamic so dramatically (but joyfully) changed.

Baby Packee joins four adoring siblings who at present clamor and compete to hold him. Below, on the night he was born, Zoomie gets the honors as Sooby, Pooh, and Bootsie look on.

Since then, everyone has had plenty of turns, including me. This photo, taken right before I left to come home five days ago, pretty well verifies that I still have my knack for baby-holding and assures Packee's place as suitable subject matter for "Googie's Attic."

A few friends have asked me how I chose "Packee" as the blog nickname for this seventh addition to Googie's cast of characters. In the case of his siblings, I have always added a double-o to the first letter of their real names to form the nicknames used to reference them in the blog. So when it happened that this baby's first name begins with the same letter as that of his brother "Pooh," I had a hard time coming up with another name beginning P-O-O. (Think about it--the options are not too promising.)

So I decided to include the double-e pattern from the names of his cousins Beenie and Heero and to position those letters at the end of the word. Since the baby's real-life initals are P.A.C., I determined I could add a "k" and call him "Packee." Not only does this honor his real initials, but it also honors a TV character I loved as a child in the late 1950s--Packy Lambert. Packy, played by Roger Mobley, was in the cast of the Saturday morning TV show Fury, a series about a beautiful black horse living on a ranch in California.

Our little Packee is three weeks old today. He arrived five days before his sister Bootsie's ninth birthday, which was pretty well eclipsed by his arrival. I am late with her birthday blog, I know, but maybe she will be so busy with her new little brother that she won't notice.