I can only imagine that the words I now find to describe that infant's legs are accurate, precise. I can only find words to describe how that infant experienced his body, not actually experience it myself. Everything I write is a translation. I feel what that infant felt through a nervous system years older and by now accustomed to a certain amount of physical and emotional pain. There is no other way of retrieval, no other way to remember.
Familiarity can impede recognition.
Over time, the body adjusts until, like the Belt Parkway's constant flow of traffic fifteen floors below our apartment, what was once a severe disturbance becomes white noise. When one is accustomed to it, even a screeching car or ambulance siren will not attract attention. Over time, an alarm clock will no longer alert a sleeper that it is time to wake up, unless the alarm markedly increases in volume or, more likely, if the sound changes just enough, enabling the warning to be heeded once more. I often try to imagine what it is like for a newly born boy to spend his first six weeks in the hospital, the first four weeks in an incubator. For someone that young to spend so much time in a hospital.