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I was looking at some pictures a friend sent of a recent grand-baby. There she was, so pink and cuddlesome, so trusting and dependent. The child looked as though she felt so safe, but safer than that -- she looked as though she had not yet needed to even define "safe" as something disctinct from her everything.
Everything about her was pink, even her soul - she was soft and pristine, untouched by the world's unkindnesses.
That will change.
Now comes the hard part. The barrage on that child -- a barrage of life, of everyone else's safe and unsafe places.
I saw a face of a terrorist on the news. Contorted with hatred. A face that wanted me, and others like me, dead. Safety got pushed out of that face a long time ago. And it pushed the safety out of mine.
I read in the news of a woman crack addict found dead.Was she ever someone's dear baby girl, rocked to sleep with lullabyes?
I saw the broken body of a young man, blown apart by war, and thought of that little pink baby he used to be, so safe, so protected.
I see people in the streets, walking like automotons past eachother, oblivious to anyone else's human condition, and often oblivious to their own.The membranes that feel, that notice the world have become closed. They walk through tunnels of denial every day.
I loved my friend's grand-baby pictures. They reminded me what soft is, what it is to be able to be vulnerable, that vulnerable.
There is no blame in change. The world has its way with us, and life is too demanding for us to be as happily dependent as babes and still survive. But there are moments when we cannot help but see the distance we have come from Eden.
These are the moments we beg our children to not rush childhood, to take care in how much they shed and how quickly. For there is no getting it back.
I was looking at some pictures a friend sent of a recent grand-baby. There she was, so pink and cuddlesome, so trusting and dependent. The child looked as though she felt so safe, but safer than that -- she looked as though she had not yet needed to even define "safe" as something disctinct from her everything.
Everything about her was pink, even her soul - she was soft and pristine, untouched by the world's unkindnesses.
That will change.
Now comes the hard part. The barrage on that child -- a barrage of life, of everyone else's safe and unsafe places.
I saw a face of a terrorist on the news. Contorted with hatred. A face that wanted me, and others like me, dead. Safety got pushed out of that face a long time ago. And it pushed the safety out of mine.
I read in the news of a woman crack addict found dead.Was she ever someone's dear baby girl, rocked to sleep with lullabyes?
I saw the broken body of a young man, blown apart by war, and thought of that little pink baby he used to be, so safe, so protected.
I see people in the streets, walking like automotons past eachother, oblivious to anyone else's human condition, and often oblivious to their own.The membranes that feel, that notice the world have become closed. They walk through tunnels of denial every day.
I loved my friend's grand-baby pictures. They reminded me what soft is, what it is to be able to be vulnerable, that vulnerable.
There is no blame in change. The world has its way with us, and life is too demanding for us to be as happily dependent as babes and still survive. But there are moments when we cannot help but see the distance we have come from Eden.
These are the moments we beg our children to not rush childhood, to take care in how much they shed and how quickly. For there is no getting it back.
posted by Mata H at Friday, July 07, 2006
1 Comments:
Oh so true, the growing up... the hardest part of being a parent, the hoping that some part of that childhood becomes etched forever in their soul, that they may always keep contact with it as they grow.
To keep childhood alive enough to be able to revisit it is precious. We do all change, harden as we (hopefully) become wiser, but I believe in the deepest part of most people there is a softness that cries out to be nurtured.
Some people don't ever get a chance to have a childhood though, and I imagine when your world starts to harden so young, it must be nigh on impossible to remember and revisit the soft safe recesses of childhood
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