We Are All Babies
The orderly who wheeled me and my swaddling babe from the maternity ward to the curb, where my awaiting chariot (our ten-year-old SUV) awaited, was a giant. He must have been close to seven feet tall, and he had to stoop to reach the sure-grip handles behind my shoulders. He was an unsettling combination of immense and gawky-awkward, as if, like a teenager, he was still learning how to operate himself. He had a patchy reddish beard trying its best to fill in, and although he didn’t speak, I imagined his voice coming out like a teenager’s too, in a cadence spanning several octaves, the pubescent accidental yodeler. In a photo snapped of our grand exit from the hospital, I see he had to duck when we passed through the automatic front doors of the lobby. The newborn in my arms is as long as his shoe.
Having a baby does all kinds of things to a person. Me, I was endowed with the dubiously-super superpower to see everyone around me as the babies they formerly were. When I looked at that orderly, I saw him as both a grown man and a taut-round infant with a little campfire of hair burning on the top of his head. I see the parking lot security guard with those same deep dimples in his fat baby cheeks. In the car, see my husband as a slit-eyed infant, admittedly cribbing off my memory of the actual baby photos in the hall at his mother’s house. We stop for burritos on the way home, our hospital bracelets still bunched at our wrists, begging the question no one will give us the pleasure of answering, and when the cashier messes up our tally for the third time in a row and acts huffy, as if it were somehow our fault he pushed the wrong buttons, all I want to do is pat him on the head and pop a bottle in his mouth and tell him Shh, it will be all right. Everything will be all right.
It’s a complicated superpower (as I imagine most probably are). It turns the world into a big round playpen, both for better and for worse. We are all innocent, we are all joyful, we are all reveling in our chubby thighs and fascinated with the miracle of our own hands as we watch them turn this way and that, flexing and stretching, making fists and then five-fingered stars and then fists again, which we shove into our mouths. We are also single-minded and fragile. So, so fragile. We are defenseless and clumsy and we have no idea what we’re doing. We need our mommies. We need a nap. Some of us need a time out.
At times, I do what I can to turn this power off. It’s hard to see homeless babies slumped in dark doorways. It’s hard to see them wearing out the pavement on the same street corner day after day in their shoes like platform stilts made out of coffee cans and string. It’s hard to see them in suits and ties and drinking martinis in the light of noon. It’s hard to see them wearing douchebag sunglasses indoors, buying toilet paper and beer and Tums at the grocery store yet still trying desperately to look cool. It’s hard to reconcile that some of these babies are walking down the sidewalk packing heat.
Becoming a mother makes you tough, they say. You will find strength you didn’t know you had. You will awaken a bear within you.
They don’t say, Becoming a mother will strip you down to your bones and nerves and make everything sharp like a knife, like a drop of acid. They don’t say, Your feelings will be magnified and you will wonder why humans haven’t evolved better coping mechanisms than listening to upbeat music and buying decorative doodads online at clearance prices. They tell you it’s harder to hear about bad things happening to children. They don’t tell you it’s harder to hear about bad things happening to anyone.
I have a superpower I don’t always want, but I’m learning how to harness it. It’s not all bad. It reminds me where we came from and where we’re going. It is a spotlight of perspective on a dark stage. It helps me be more gentle with others. It helps me be more gentle with myself. I am someone’s baby too. Shh, everything will be all right.
Many perhaps-more-desperate-than-most babies turn to the structure of a 12-step group and a loving higher power, too, to first survive and then thrive. I think coping is best and most successfully done in a community of others who lovingly tell you, “you’re not alone” and “you’re not the only one.”
This might be my favorite post of yours ever, and the best thing I’ve read in a long time. Beautiful and so true.
This is so beautiful. What a torturous gift motherhood is, right?
So, so beautiful and very well said.
Leah, that was just perfectly beautiful.
Moving. I love the line:
“They don’t tell you it’s harder to hear about bad things happening to anyone.”
It’s true…that struck a chord.
Beautiful. It’s actually a great thing to try to do, to remember that everyone is someone’s baby.
This is the best thing I have read online in a long, long time. You nailed it. Poignant and moving and beautiful.
This is a truly excellent post. I have enjoye your writing for years but this one is, like…..POW!!! Or maybe…BAM!!! Either way, beautifully written, and exactly what do many of us cannot even start to put into words.
This whole post is great, but that second to last paragraph really brought it home for me.
What a poignant observation, voicing so well what so many of us mothers see but don’t have words for. Thank you.
This is beautiful…expecting my first (a boy!) in June and can’t even imagine how intense it’s going to be on all of these levels.
“Your feelings will be magnified and you will wonder why humans haven’t evolved better coping mechanisms than listening to upbeat music and buying decorative doodads online at clearance prices.” AH. Too close to home.
Great piece.
What an absolutely beautiful thing you’ve written here.
“They don’t tell you it’s harder to hear about bad things happening to anyone.”
This one will stay with me, Leah.
*cough cough* A random & delightful sidenote: GOMI is going down. http://getoffmyinternets.net/gomi-forum/general-chat/note-gomi-most-likely-closing-in-30-days/ She can’t pay to keep it going.
This is one of those pieces that is so beautifully written that, as a writer, I struggle with continuing to write because clearly, perfection has been reached.
Thank you!
I am so the same way. It’s why I can pretty much only watch romantic comedies anymore.
Oh, the homeless babies part just about KILLED ME. I have this superpower as well, and am not nearly as skilled at using it for good as I am at allowing it to make me feel anxious and maudlin.
This was a beautiful post.
I want to reach thru the internets and hug you for this. Just beautiful.
What a great post – very well written. I experienced this as well, especially when both of my boys were tiny babies. I often have the thought, “God, that’s someone’s BABY” when I hear about something awful on the news.
This had me in tears… so well written! I am a nurse in an ICU and I often think that becoming a mother has made me a better nurse in the sense that I can’t help but look at my patients and think this was someone’s baby… I was always compassionate but it’s different now in ways I can’t always define.
You expressed this so well here. Thank you!
Damn but this was good. Thanks for writing it.
Beautiful and true.
Beautiful. I completely get this. After I became a mom, it finally dawned on me that we all are someone’s son or daughter. It helps me deal with the impossible people (sometimes). Actually, today I’m having a particularly challenging morning, so this was the right thing to read at the right time. Thank you!
The world would be vastly improved by even a small dose of this perspective.
Drawn in by the words – such an eloquence here.
It’s amazing how motherhood can change a person’s perspective about life. I have yet to experience this myself but I’ve seen this kind of change many times happening to my friends.
Campfire of hair. I’ll never forget that. Gorgeous.