big and small.

My nephew was born last week, Jonathan Turner.  His entry into the world was anticipated by a pretty good crowd and even his three-year-old cousin was there at nearly midnight to welcome him.  My sister, who delivered this child with Audrey Hepburn-like grace and class, didn't even break a sweat and when it was all over, still had her mascara on.  

I didn't anticipate the melting phenomenon.  I've never been much of a "baby person," which is a phrase I often hear people say who are a bit cynical and probably a bit nervous, to be honest.  But then I saw him, from behind the plexi-glass window, being washed by a nurse.  She scrubbed his little red bottom and I could see his little face all screwed up in a grimace.  Our whole family, and my sister's in-laws and friends, we all watched.  And do you know what I did?  I sat down on the floor with my chin on the window sill and started crying.  I was the only one! Everyone else is cooing at baby Jonathan, laughing and saying how mad he must be to be so cold and wet and naked.  I pressed my face up against the bottom of the glass to hide my tears from everyone.  I turned into mush, smashed-up with butter and milk mashed-potato face.  That was me.

When my sister asked me to hold him the next morning, the only thing I could concentrate on was not dropping him, hearkening back to memories of the first day we had our Golden Retriever puppy, Jake, in the house and I dropped him from standing onto the wood floor in the kitchen... on his head.  I think I ran into my room and cried.  Are you sensing a reactionary pattern?  I have always hated the fact that I cry when I'm overwhelmed with any emotion because it makes me feel so--ridiculous.  But it's good, I suppose, to be reminded of my own mediocrity.  It causes me to anticipate with eagerness the ways I will one day express the emotion I intend with creativity and grace in heaven.  Anyway, when Hannah handed me her son, I awkwardly cradled him in my arms and said a prayer as she passed him off to me.  I may have been sweating.  

But then I sat back in the chair and nestled the little guy up in the crook of my elbow.  He squirmed around in his swaddled cloths and I called him "Wormy" and stared at his small button nose and his eyes half-opened.  And after some time, when the room was quiet and my sister was dozing off in the hospital bed, I did the only thing I knew how to.  I began to sing, soft and sweet.  He stopped fidgeting and went loosely still.  I think the words of the old Beatles song, "Blackbird," drifted into his infant ears and settled in a little cranny in his memory.  I think we bonded.