I have a new job. It’s a great job without any of the usual pressures or deadlines. There was no interview process required, no resume, no references, no mission statement or short and long-term goals to be clarified. Nothing! All I had to do was to be born, grow up, learn some things, make a few mistakes, fall in love, get married, have a baby, watch her grow up, love her, care for her, make a few more mistakes, read aloud, nurture her dreams, welcome her beloved into the family, and then say “Yes!” when she asked, “Would you like to hold your grandson!?”
This is my new job. I spend hours staring into the precious, tender, expressive face of a sweet baby boy who is just one week old today. We hang out on the sofa or in his daddy’s big comfy chair. We sway back and forth on the squeaky place on the living room floor while his mama takes a nap, and then he and I just put our feet up and stare into each other’s faces. And there really are no words for it.
Here in my arms is a little life that just knows what to do. He has a map and compass built in and even a meter for goodness and badness. He’s elemental and spectacular all at once. Just like the haze of bright green buds that formed a misty halo around the treetops in my neighborhood after our unbelievably long and cold winter, this sweet baby knows what to do. I love to watch his little mouth with its precious curve of an upper lip begin to pucker and twitch as his tender head rolls to the side searching for something like sap that will fill his little tummy and then his veins, arteries, skin, bones, muscles and organs. Just like the trees, his instruction booklet says “Grow!”
My job is to notice, to notice and rejoice, to say, “Did you see that? Did you see what he just did?!” And I get to do other sweet jobs like folding the tiny clothes and putting them in the basket, filling the Brita so there’s always plenty of fresh water for his mama, or taking out the trash. But the best job of all is just staring into his baby eyes, and finding…everything. Even his eyes are like the trees, windows into the impulse of life towards growth, beauty, and wisdom. What is here now, in these eyes, is the same spark that turns the haze of buds to masses of fluttering green leaves that will shade our summer picnics or provide shelter for the birds. It’s the same spark that will turn those leaves to brilliant reds and yellows and become a carpet on the woodland floor. And even in the depth of winter, even when the spark of life is kept just barely alive deep in the trees’ roots below the ground, still there is a spark, an intrinsic impulse keeping the tree alive.
People say that its indescribable, the love that wells like a fountain from the heart of being itself when one beholds a baby’s face.
Trust them! It's real.
