C I P R I A N I

They talk about after all the hustle and rushing around, when it all settles in, how someone’s death may hit you after a few days, weeks, months, even years.  You cry, maybe, but when someone passes away at some point, it really hits you.  You hear this all the time.  At least I do…

You don’t hear that as much when it comes to birth.  Life.  Oh, you hear about your life changing, the wonder, the amazing – seems like everyone likes to talk about the instant with a baby.  

Well, it just hit me.  Really did.  That the boy has been born.  My son.  Not that I haven’t been emotional, loving holding him, even changing his diapers.  And I’m certainly as delirious as I’ve been for the past three weeks. 

But something came into focus just now…A lump in my throat, a slightly different lens on the world.  Just slightly.  Like when you go to the optamologist and he tests two lenses – “This one, or This One.” – And that one’s just slightly better.

And it’s an ineffable joy.  A pure joy.  How could so much of the world be packed into something so small?

There’s so much hope and innocence and faith that one loses as one gets older – At least I did. There’s a struggle to still fight for it all, to maintain some of that.  But there’s this feeling that it’s gone forever.

Then you have a child and you see the Ying to the Yang.

It’s not a vicarious thing.  It’s not something that makes all your problems or the problems of the world go away.  It doesn’t “fix” anything really.  But seeing the beginning of something…The start…All that hope, all that innocence – and feeling it…

I guess it reminds you of a better self, probably because you forget your own a little.  And isn’t that part of the trick?  

Letting go of your self, your fears, your desires – simply being and trying to mindful of it all.  

A baby has no choice.  He simply is.

Slowly becoming aware of all that there is in the world – the pain and the joy.  At this point, hardly any of it is even in focus for him … and yet for me, I’ve probably never had as much clarity…

…at least not since his age.