Life Unimagined

There's a Steve Martin film where he's speeding and pulled over by a state patrolman. The cop tells him to get out of his car and makes him run through a battery of field sobriety tests.

"Please touch your nose sir ... Now recite the alphabet backwards while standing on one foot," etc, etc.
 The tests become increasingly more difficult.

"Okay," says the patrolman, "now I want you to do a series of back flips along the fog line."

"But--"

"Just do it, sir!"

"Wow," Steve Martin says aloud before nailing the flips, "these California State Police don't mess around."

Six years ago, my friends Marc and Susan journeyed down to Central America to pick up their cocoa-skinned Guatemalan baby girl, Sofia. To arrive at that point, they had to run the adoption gauntlet, as it were. They contacted a reputable adoption agency, filled out a lengthy application, had any number of friends and references checked out, and payed upward of $30,000 for expenses and adoption costs. They spent the better part of five days in Guatemala City getting to know their new baby daughter before at last bringing her back to Albuquerque.

That flight home--I can't even imagine. Two people travel to a foreign country as a couple and return as a family. No doubt the time needed to prepare for the addition to their family--the interviews and paperwork, the hoops to jump through, and the travel time--all served as a kind of white collar gestational period.

I refused to pick up Sofia for almost the entire first year of her life.

I did hold her briefly when they first got home. Susan thrust Sofia into my arms, and I offered the obligatory smile as if, gosh, there was nothing that would make me happier than holding this little infant in my arms. In reality, I couldn't--and to a certain extent still can't--get over the feeling that a human being was being passed to me like a bowl of chips, regardless of whether she liked it or not. I held Sofia as one would a particularly odoriferous bag of garbage--arms extended and slightly away from one's body. I looked at her and tried my best to make soothing, cooing sounds, but really, I was whistling in the dark. Not practiced in Baby-ese, I quickly ran out of material and simply stared at her with an anxious smile on my face. No doubt sensing my discomfort, Sofia started to squirm and arch her back.

"Um, she's moving," I said a little panicked.

"That's okay," Susan said with a smile. "She just needs to get used to you."

"That's okay," I said and quickly handed her back.

It took me nearly a year and hours of therapy to recover from the trauma of what became known (in my head) as the "Baby Holding Incident." I still went to Marc and Susan's on many occasions, and would often play with Sofia, but never allowed myself to swoop in like some entitled giant and just willy-nilly pick her up.

Then one morning ten months after they brought Sofia home, she stood up. Then I stood up and, natural as can be, I scooped her up as if I had been hanging around babies my entire life. Together we mosyed toward the back of the house where Sofia stared longingly at the door, then up at me, then back at the door.  I got the hint. We took a turn around the backyard, and Sofia pointed at various things, her face lit with wonder and glee.

"That's a bird," I would say looking at the object of her delight.

She pointed to some flowers along the fence. "That's a rose," I said with excitement.

She pointed again. "That's tree. Can you say tree?"

"Buh," she said.

"Close enough."

We walked around the yard a bit more until Sofia indicated she wanted to get down. She crawled around on the grass a bit until ... uh-oh. "Susan," I said, through the back door, but keeping an eye on my charge, "Sofia's eating dirt."

"That's okay," Susan said from the kitchen. "She'll learn."

Fast forward four years. Jenn and I are visiting Marc and Susan from Oregon. Jenn is sitting in an overstuffed chair in the living room making jewelry. Sofia is standing to her right watching with fascination and chatting away while the family dog, Chaco, milled about under foot. 

I let my attention be diverted by a coffee table book when I heard Jenn say, "Who told you that?"

I looked up to see an amused smile on her face.

"My mommy," Sofia said.

"What?" I asked from the couch.

"Sofia was just telling me about Chaco."

Sofia looked over at me with her innocent, almond eyes.

"What'd she say?" I asked.

"That they had to cut Chaco's balls off so he couldn't have babies."

Tears poured down my face, and Sofia studied me to figure out if I was laughing at her. I muted my mirth enough to convey that, while I loved what she said, my amusement was not at her expense.

Over the years, I have had any number of friends relate cute stories about their kids--if they are sent via email, more often than not I delete without reading--but I'm not sure that I've ever been more delighted by any child quote. Ever. This is what I am looking so forward to about parenthood: To be able to spend time with a being who is seeing everything for the first time, and by extension, will teach me to see things for the first time as well.

From the Prophet:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 
but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children 
as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 
and He bends you with His might 
that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let our bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

As a young boy, I remember being in awe of my father. There didn't seem to be the name of a movie star he didn't know or a song he couldn't sing along to in his smooth baritone voice. He was the sea god whose shoulders I would ride as we swam through the chlorinated waters of our country club pool. Later, of course, we would watch the Packers get trounced on TV.

What an unimagined life. I still don't know how I got here. Jenn is getting bigger by the day. She thinks our baby turned last night to what's called the anterior position--face down toward her tail bone. This is the ideal birth position for mother and baby alike.  Our daughter will be entering the world anytime between mid- and end of July. She will enter a world surrounded by fire and smoke, love and mystery. Many, many arms are awaiting her arrival. They will have to wait in line. I plan on packing a lifetime of baby holding into a few short years.