A new baby drapes your home in gauze. Wooden walls turn into a sheer, breathing tent - a cover that eases light, quiets aches, and softens the world outside. Everything else pushes to a far away place. Muffled. The smallness of your bed becomes all the space you need. Long moments pile and loop, as you watch this small person who was just growing beneath your skin. You try on the feeling of mother. Caregiver. Sheppard. Lover of someone new. You reconnect with someone your body and spirit seems to already know. He was meant for you.
Blindly, I run back to these early hours as my children grow. Some days at a dizzying pace. I come up for air, gasping for the moments when breathing, feeding, sleeping was all that mattered. These memories fuel for the ruts, when things hurt, I am unsure, or maybe have lost my way. Growing-up a child isn't easy. And like weeds, they grow. Racing towards the sun. No matter how much you squeeze or beg or clamp shut your eyes. They grow.
Many a wild moment will bleed and run and color the slate of their childhood. The jungle of life pushes that early-gauze-newborn tent off way before we are ready. Life's long arms creep in. But we never forget. Those first hours. The haze. The quiet. The connection. The billowing, blinding light of a new soul.
It's rooted deep in our bones.
