24 Apr It All Starts With Silence

There are moments when we enter a new stage violently and we are far from prepared. Childbirth. Pain and joy explode.

There’s more to birth and welcoming of the new, though. Behind the scenes a parallel process unfolds, slow and gentle this time, and we are led to discover something new and grand while finding time for ourselves.

It is relatively easy to get used to watching a small bundle of joy whose primary pastime is sleep, sometimes food, leaving us with some spare time for reflection. How much harder it would be to have to handle a stubborn screaming toddler from day one.

Thanks to the initial spare time, even the most busy beee parents learn to contemplate the newborn in their midst.

Just like many other phenomena in life, this phenomenon can be excessively publicized, streamed live, over-photographed, over-celebrated and over-communicated with family or social media. Still, the parents will inevitably stumble upon moments of calm and peace.  All parents will eventually experience an amazing encounter with silence once the dust settles.

A moment of discovery, no words attached. A moment of awe.

It is intimidating on the one hand, and natural on the other. It follows the way “things are”: things get quiet after a tumultuous delivery and the accompanying chaos.

The mom puts the sleeping newborn down, switches off her phone and looks on. She watches with a long gaze full of disbelief and yet with extraordinary calmness resembling a surprised spontaneous prayer.

The dad, having talked with the mum, having written down the shopping and errand lists and gone about town, returns to the hospital and discovers in his movements a previously unknown subtlety and lingering. He beholds the new mother and the sleeping child.

He looks on.

He looks on with a long gaze and an even greater disbelief. That sleeping creature contains some part of his “self”. There’s something familiar there, but in a smaller and different body. The Mystery is sleeping like there’s no tomorrow.

A vast land of calm and quiet after the storm. Something changes, something has obeyed the praeternatural order, something is made right within. Something trembles, resonates, fades away.

Someone much-awaited who has changed our world is there.

Asleep and unfamiliar still.

Asleep and unaware of many things.

Asleep, unaware that he will probably travel farther than we did, learn more than we could and ultimately survive us.

He might even be the one to accompany us on our last journey one day, some place.