TGIF

My health was good enough early in the week for a quick trip to visit my daughter's family for a couple of nights.  What bliss holding that baby girl!  I held her when her mom needed a shower.  Or when she needed to make a cup of coffee.  Or wanted a much needed nap.  I watched that baby's ever changing facial expressions and wondered what physic or physical storm was passing through her as she grimaced and turned beet red.  I watched her face in the most peaceful repose when a deep sleep took hold.  What is it about a new born baby?  So fragile and yet so tough (yeah, getting born is tough!).  Completely ageless and timeless.  I look down at her and see the images of my grandmother as a baby, 105 years ago, being cradled by her own loving mother.  I see my mother. I see my daughter. I see the entire arc of a life spinning in front of my eyes.  Sadly, I see all the unlucky babes throughout the world who, innocents though they are, have had the most horrific acts done to them in war, and famine, and just plain mundane everyday cruelty.  Why do they suffer while my grand daughter is allowed to flourish?

Holding this baby is an emotional roller coaster of love, faith, and trust juxtaposed with terror, fear and dark apocalyptic scenarios.  I breathe out the fear and hope for the best.  It's all any of us can do.  I wish that, when dealing with other humans, we could all remember that once we were some parent's most beloved child: all hope and possibility in front of us.  We were cherished (if we were lucky) and had somebody to watch out for us and teach us.  Not all possibilities end well.

But here's one of the miraculous things about holding my grand daughter in my arms: my hopes soar.  My love swells and fills my chest and I believe in all good things.  The universe is infinite and wondrous.  Maybe she will be the one who solves world climate change.  Or discovers the cure for disease.  Perhaps she will find her purpose in poetry, or photography, or in helping children or the elderly. 

For now, I just know that she is the yin and yang of it all.

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

--Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me, by Mary Oliver