Among the pooping, spitting up, feeding, and crying (sometimes from the mama, too) babies occasionally afford the most miraculous experience to those who care for them. It is hard to describe without cliché, but it is beautiful and wonderful and my goal to describe it here.
I literally look at my newborn all the time. I watch her eat and watch her play. I check her body for rashes and bumps. I see her. She sees me. We have even reached a stage of chatting with each other. But now and then, my baby will catch my eye in such a way as to invite me into her soul. There is no other way to describe it. She will lock onto my eyes with this smile of utter joy on her face and attach herself to my heart. I feel my eyes well up with tears and my heart beats a little faster. It is so nearly tangible, that when I inevitably avert my eyes, I expect to see the tether between us. I am always the one to break the stare. I try not to, but within a few seconds it overwhelms me. It simultaneously breaks my heart and fills it.
Even among the adults I love most dearly I have never felt that anchoring of lives through a wordless look the way I have with my children. Pride, shame, or fear prevent that exchange between adults-whether on my part or theirs, the window is closed.
But a baby. A baby will let you in. All the trust that they have in their entire being is in you. It is a charge that is humbling and terrifying. But each little moment that I am granted that view, I feel the forces within me pledge myself to a life of loyalty, love, and care. And I know that she is seeing me, too. She is the breeze through the gap in the sill drawing out my secret self. The part of me that exists beyond my self-consciousness, my self image, and my doubt.
I remember telling my sister in early months after my son's birth that sometimes I would look at him and it was more than I could see. Like I couldn't take it all in. But now, nearly four years later, I am keenly aware of what was happening. I know because I can't sleep at night unless he has been checked on. I know because I have washed his vomit out of my hair, and the only feeling I had was sadness that he was ill. I know because I have loved him on the hardest days. Those moments I had described before-he was letting me in. And I was letting him in, too.
Friends have asked what it is like having kids, well, this is it.
