Baby Dedication

-
How do you measure grief?  The answer, of course, is that you don't.

But in some misguided attempt to shield myself from pain, I occasionally find myself trying.  How much would I hurt if I lost this love? How could I continue on if this were taken from me?

Part of this, I know, comes from a deep-seated hatred of possibly-permanent good-byes. I won't attempt to describe the far too frequent times I've ducked out of sight instead of formulating the final words, the "have a nice life" sort of moments.

And I know, too, that some of this stems from a twisted view of the Divine. A fatalistic certainty bids me not care too deeply for anything or anyone, for certainly that will be what God will take.

Whatever the root, the outgrowth is a slowness to love; fear is a choking, crippling tyrant.

The first few months I put my baby in bed, I'd think about all of the threats that might prevent me from having him with me in the morning, and I would try to convince myself that even if SIDS stalked my house while I slept, I wouldn't be ruined by grief... only wounded. And by reasoning that my life and breath weren't intimately dependent on his life and breath, I could sleep.

But love is not about self-preservation.  And death, whether expected of the aged or unexpected of the unborn, has a way of making you wish that you had it in you to have given more... to be capable of feeling the wound more than is humanly possible.

I'm not going to add anything profound to voices of philosophers and psychologists on this, but only my thoughts as this pertains to baby dedication. This isn't the baby dedication of protestant churches where parents commit to raise their child as is pleasing to God, and friends and family promise to support them in their efforts. This is the baby dedication of every goodbye, whether it be for a few hours or the slow weaning of letting go as my baby learns independence. It is an acceptance that God does not owe me an allotted number of days with my baby. My baby is His and He has blessed me with the days leading up to today but maybe not tomorrow.

I cannot cling, only cherish. I cannot agonize, only recognize moment by moment that my baby is God's far more than he will ever be mine.


Comments

Vicki Carroll said…
I love you, Biuks. <3
10:09 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "No I" Phone

-
Image
It's a cheap party trick: I pull out my phone, flip it open to check the time or send a quick text, and watch for the reactions. In the decades I've owned a flip phone, people have given me a few double takes. Recently, though, when I opened my phone to squint at a photo texted to me, the person sitting across the conference table surprised me with a "Haha! I love your phone!" And I did, too. I loved my flip phone. Then, in a deadly mistake of distracted domesticity, I scooped it up with my bed sheets and dropped it in the washing machine: Eco Cold, extra spin. Oh gentle readers, the tragedy of beautiful T9 predictive text programming drowned at the bottom of the linens spin cycle! Yes, I lost saved phone numbers, the blurry store photos I'd snapped over the years to double check prices when back to internet access, the text threads with details about addresses and meet-ups... all lost. Sad, inconvenient, annoying, frustrating, all of it. But the biggest tragedy, ...
Read more

Amtrak Adventuring

-
Image
Trying to see it all, 2011 I may never look down the aisle of an Amtrak train without remembering a baby bouncing, holding fast to the seat as the train rocked and bounced even faster. All the world over, trains carry a reputation for efficiency and frugality. That has never been my experience with Amtrak.  The Adventure Begins, June 22, 2011 Thirteen years ago (almost to the day) our little family set out on our first Amtrak adventure. We thought three weeks touring the United States on a train with an infant made so much more sense than the alternative. The alternative being flying or driving (with the same infant) to a wedding in the middle of Cornfieldville, Ohio. Being young and foolish, it made perfect sense. Our baby did not yet sleep through the night, so sitting up in coach seating night after night wouldn't affect our sleep all that much. With a rolling ice chest filled with lunch sacks that prevented us from knowing in advance whether our meal was Option A, B, or C, w...
Read more

The Crazy Market

-
There is a place here in Beijing that I (not so) affectionately call The Crazy Market. Imagine four floors of wall to wall shops, one shop selling the same thing that 15 other shops are selling, all displayed with bright colors and lights and each shop having two or three people who call out "Hello! What are you looking for?" "Hello! We give you good price!" "Hello! How many coats you want buy?" "Hello! We have your size shoe!" (This one makes me want to stop and say "Oh, I greatly doubt it.") "Hello! Nice pearls for you!" If you so much as look at an item, it is immediately assumed that you will buy it and so they call out "What is your highest price? We give you good discount." The only exception to this is the very bottom floor that is filled with every imaginable and unimagineable sea creature and various sea creature parts in various stages of life. This serves as a good aroma which frequently makes its way up t...
Read more