This joyful little firecracker turns one today.
If you want to make connections and feel good about the world, I highly recommend toting around a happy, sociable white baby. This kid makes friends and sows smiles everywhere he goes. Every day, a cheerful or wistful stranger tells me about their children, how old they are and where they live now, how sweet they were as babies, how fast the time goes.
Becoming a mother has been a profoundly humbling experience. Everyone says that parenting is hard, but it is impossible to understand intellectually the bodily work of raising a small child. The queasy lethargy of early pregnancy. The uncountable aches and inconveniences of the later months. Giving birth, of course, an experience that words and even memory can only glance off ineffectually. Then the tiny fingernails scratching my chest, my eyes, my nostrils. The tiny teeth on my finger, my breast, my nose, the flesh of my shoulder. The cries that raise an itchy panic inside me and always, always come just as I have fallen asleep, or opened my book, or sat down to my meal. The tiny body, amazingly elastic, hurling itself desperately at any door I might briefly shut myself behind. The fingers scrabbling everywhere, always, for rocks or acorn caps or screws or broken glass to cram into the mouth. The arms lunging for hot cups of coffee or sharp knives or wobbly furniture. The cheerfully extended tongue that seeks out toilets, electrical outlets, wet paint, mysterious chemical powders.
Looking at my son, I realize just how dependent we humans are on one another. When he was born he could not move his body with purpose, but he gazed steadily into my eyes. The first milestone his doctor asked about was smiling. Now he sees a spoon coming toward his mouth and opens absently, faithfully. When he bumps his head or pinches his finger he sits still and yells as loud as he can and reaches his arms high to be picked up, knowing someone will come.
Many things in life have come easy to me. Being a mother is not one of them. It is wonderful, of course, but it is hard. In fact it is so difficult that I cannot understand how we have all survived. The continued existence of everyone around me beggars belief. I have never been a spiritually inclined person but sometimes I can see, now, how much love and labor has been poured into each of us. I see us all sloshing, overflowing, luminous with the reflexive, ceaseless care required to sustain us.
Maybe Benjamin sees it too. Maybe that’s why he is always smiling.
Happy birthday, little one. May you keep reaching out for all the years to come.