The photos were taken exactly two years ago today, one day after Anker’s swoop of hair was abruptly shorn (to the no doubt insufferable accompaniment of a mother’s shrieking). And two things strike me as remarkable.

One, he does not seem “so little, even though it seems like yesterday”: sure, it seems like yesterday, but he is basically as I know him today; wearing a shirt I love, which he still wears, and those jean shorts that are roomy even now. This marks a new era, I suppose, one in which two years no longer an exponential difference make.

And two—having lice is no big deal, it turns out. I remember the horror then, both of us, infested, repugnant, marked. And how Marta hastened to convince me, over Skype, that those chemical treatments are unnecessary and combing alone is highly effective, and how moments later Ola drove all the way from Piaseczno to drop off the clever ZapX™ C200 comb (with the “helical micro-toothed tubular structure” that “offers better efficiency without any use of aggressive treatments while protecting the scalp”)—and, in mere days, lice were eradicated, a phobia conquered. Today I take pleasure in observing that, before having lice, I would not have agreed to have lice for a million dollars, whereas now I’d probably agree for, like, five hundred bucks. Seriously, they never fall into your food, and it’s really an easy fix.