Baby

Human offspring arrive in a state of total physical neediness.  Squishy little people emerge experts of food to feces conversion with few other skills - except looking cute which compels us to stare at newborns in complete rapture as they sleep or sit and do nothing (this is how they rope us into total devotion).  A baby arrives primarily cranium and torso with short, scrawny limbs which for months remain non-useful for ambulation.  They cannot even hold up their own heads!  Human infants require constant tending, holding, feeding, wiping, cuddling, diapering, nail clipping, and protecting.  While still continuing to hone their best skill – poo production – a baby will hopefully learn and grow under the watchful eye of dutiful adults.  How delicate is the balance of molding without mangling, fine tuning without fencing the growing baby!

 

The noun baby is defined at dictionary.com.
1.  an infant or very young child
2.  a newborn or very young animal
3.  the youngest of a family, group, etc.
4.  an immature or childish person

I struggle with the balance still as I look back over thirteen years to the birth of my first baby.  Currently outnumbered by that kid and the additional two that followed, I see some moments of my mothering leaving room for individuation.  Mixed in are a few places where I’ve managed to do so much that I made myself essential in ways that are neither good for me nor the baby grown over time to be now a medium size human.  Constantly there is trying and trying again on all our parts.  I consider it a conglomerate kind of progress.  And so it goes - little growth, little steps, little learning, little and little adding up over time allowing movement away from the stage of baby toward someone more mature.

And thus it goes all our lives I aver:  pint-size progress as we expand in knowledge and experience.  I was 31 years from my own birth when I brought another person into this world.  Some days I feel having a baby has taught me to have tantrums of epic proportion myself and other days I see baby-strewn training ground for patience yielding results.  There are absolutely days born into where I don’t have the skills needed and I must acquire them as I go, sometimes feeling tired enough to cry.  Other days my once wobbly arms and legs carry out a multitude of tasks with the celebratory glory of check, check, checking things off a list.

We all arrive bodily as helpless babies.  We grow, learn and are trained by those around us.  As we age we determine what amidst all we have learned will serve us well, what makes us strong, what is true, and what ideas or habits must be discarded. Tending a baby reveals quickly how much room there is to grow even after living two or three or four (or more) decades.   

I grow and learn on my human journey developing from helplessness toward self-sufficiency.