| A newborn baby can bring a warm smile to the face and heart of a person who thinks that they have forgotten how to experience simple joy. Maybe it is the clearness of a baby's eyes and vision that only see who you are at the moment and that moment is bathed in the love and wonder that flows from your eyes and heart to the little creature you have never seen before. The baby does not have the capacity to balance your past with how she experiences you at that moment. She cannot judge you. She reminds us that this is the only second that we are guaranteed so we had better make the best use of it. And in the moment that your eyes are engaged there is a perfect exchange of what can only be called love that flows from your heart to hers and her heart to yours and that momentary peace is reflected in your respective smiles. Maybe the baby conjures up our undying fascination with newness and the hope that this little being will find a way to maintain the best of who she is as she gets older because we feel that it is too late for us -- that we have sold or otherwise compromised the best of who we are a long time ago, but there is hope for the baby. The irony is, of course, that there is still hope for the rest of us because we are still here and smile from time to time even when we try not to. Babies have a knack for making us take ourselves less seriously. These expectations are very heavy to heap on a baby, but babies don't care about adult expectations. They are too busy marveling at how little hands clutch and grasp things and how those things end up in their mouths. Then they squeal with delight when they realize that the little hands belong to them and with practice, they can control them. Every second is an adventure pregnant with the possibility of discovery. This is also true for adults, but we tend to forget. Wisdom is not the diminution of wonder but the never-ending curiosity to understand the world around us. The potential to grow in wisdom stops the second we think we know all there is to be known about anything. So, the fascination with new life seems to be a pretty common addiction since being born is one thing that we all have in common. And death is another shared experience. My father died in April 1994, and there is one event among the series of memories, emotions, expected and unexpected reunions, and other ingredients that added to the mix of celebrating one man's life on this earth that I'd like to share with you: The visitation was held at the Amsterdam Memorial Chapel on the corner of 148th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem, New York. The chapel was the center of a four-block radius that contained three generations of vibrant memories and aspirations for my extended family, coupled with the painful awareness of all that had not transpired -- beautiful, rich, full and realistic dreams that had turned to the roughest kind of survival over the decades. My mother, sister, my sister's husband and I stood at the threshold of the small room that was only accessible to the immediate family to see and spend time with their departed loved one before the casket was wheeled into the main sanctuary. We held each other tightly and inched closed to my father as our knees took turns buckling until our bodies formed a small, somber wave. Sounds cameent outside, after awhile, for a breath of air but there was none to be breathed. Everything was frozen. I couldn't see the faces of the mourners. Their words of condolence sounded like 78 records played backwards at 33 rotations per minute. The only thing that seemed to move at normal speed was the rough looking brother who rounded the corner yelling obscenities and gesturing violently at a woman whose total presence was the personification of pain. The man looked up, realized where he was and what was going on and changed into another person right before my eyes. He softened like a bowl of ice cream on a radiator in winter and apologized profusely and repeatedly as he backed away up Amsterdam Avenue with his hat in his hand. I saw kindness and compassion in his eyes and I wondered if death was the only thing capable of reconnecting us with the essential, camouflaged parts of our nobler selves. We all share the experiences of birth and death. And if there is reasonably common agreement that babies and funerals represent these two events and that these two experiences have the power to bring us together ... why do we waste so much time in between? Why do we spend the bulk of our lives trying to alter the pitch of our respective tuning forks only to have births and funerals remind us that we enter and leave this experience through the same portal? |
| Simple things/Lang Kenneth Haynes The time in between |
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