SAVORING

THANKFUL FRIDAY

On Tuesday, the day before what would have been her grandfather’s forty sixth birthday, Fern Nichole Ray Graham enter this world. The first picture I saw was of her in her hospital baby bassinet thing, wearing a diaper, a hospital bracelet and a cotton cap that sported a bow the size of her head. Her face was scrunched in an angry howl. And as I looked at that picture of this perfectly formed baby, tears came to my eyes because that is what always happens when I see a newborn. I went through a brief period of attempting to watch Call the Midwife while walking on the gym treadmill. Every time a baby was born, I’d start sobbing, which is not a good look while exercising in a public gym. Any way, FernGully Fern (that’s what I’m going to call her) is here and rightfully angry at being forced out of her original warm dark space. What a shock to a system that has to be, to find yourself naked, covered in goo and surrounded by bright horrible lights. If this were to happen to us as adults, we’d call it an alien abduction and we’d be furious about it too.

While I have been excited and overjoyed with the idea of a new baby addition to this family, I did have some concerns. I mean, what are we even doing bring new life to this dying planet?!? Is it even fair to bring a kid into this world when every thing is such a colossal mess? I quickly set those feelings aside because those concerns are my concerns for myself and I let those concerns play a part in my own life choices. We are all capable of making our own life choices. You do you, Boo. But looking at those concerns now, none of it really matters. The world is always going to be a colossal mess until it isn’t and that’s the day we won’t be around to see it. The world’s messiness is exactly why we can’t help but melt into softer beings at the sight of a baby. Any baby! I know I’m not the only one who has a self care practice that involves watching hours of reels of baby goats and kittens and puppies and all three of those combined together in one reel. The newness of life is a bundle of hope and a serving of some much needed innocence.

Babies make us softer in the best ways.

Years ago, early in our relationship, Michael said something about the layer of sadness in my family. I couldn’t disagree with him. Even when my family felt big and full, all gathered around the dining room table, there were some holes from the grandchildren that could have been present. J’s death rattled us and split the earth beneath our feet. We might have found joy and laughter together after that, but it comes with a layer of sad. My family feels so much smaller now; the holes are deeper. There are scars. We have a lot of practice in hard losses and we don’t seem to be good at gaining people into this family, particularly tiny ones. Babies are a very rare event for us. To have a baby join the family now, feels like a most unexpected gift.

Often, people will say things like “I can’t wait to see how you’ll grow!” or “I can’t wait to see the person you grow up to be!” I don’t like those sayings. They feel impatient, like there’s a rush to grow up and a pressure to be something. When I look at our little FernGully Fern, I can wait for all of those things. I want to wait for all of those things. This family needs to be able to savor the time in watching this baby grow into a toddler. We’ve more than earned this moment of softness and the joy that comes from watching babies do their silly baby things. I don’t need to have had children of my own to know that kids grow like weeds and morph into new human bodies so quickly that if you blink will miss it.

I’m all in for the savoring of this time.