Few things are so joyfully disarming as a baby trying out her first glottal stops under the Christmas tree. On picking her up to bury my face in baby fat, she broadcasts a wide, toothless grin. Sometimes she smiles so hard, it looks like it hurts. Her smiles proliferate, it seems, the better we get to know each other, the less we have to guess at what comes next. More often than not, we look forward to bedtimes and to waking, to baths and sweet potatoes and grass and crawling...there is much to look forward to, and plenty to grin about.
At other times, she looks at me quizzically, one eyebrow cocked, both eyes wide. She seems to be wondering if I know what I'm doing, or if this is some kind of rookie parent mistake. It is the same face, I think, that I make when sizing up a new commander or boss: she is both impressed and wary, and she'd love to chat about all her thoughts on how we could improve our organization! The trouble is that she only has about four phonemes currently at her disposal.
It has been said that the reason we don't remember our first months of life is that they can be traumatic--our sojourn in a strange, new world begins almost before we are ready. With only a range of cries, flails, reflexes and stares, we are left to communicate with often unexperienced interpreters. It is the beginning of an arc that can take us to an eerily similar end-of-life experience. Like the ancient riddle of the sphinx suggests, we are strange creatures who go from four legs to two and then three. Whether we go out with a bang like St. Peter, or we quietly fade from disease into shadows of our former selves, Jesus' words to Peter describe the phenomenon so well: "...I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." (John 21:18, NIV)
So much of a baby's life mirrors this feeling of helplessness, even as we watch her strive and gain her autonomy by increments every day. How strange to reflect, gazing at a baby, on the end of her life...even stranger to imagine all the ways that adult life can still script and array our waking hours to lead us where we do not want to go. For me, more precisely, that means being led away from where I most want to be: I recently learned that a deployment to Afghanistan is on the horizon.
Predictably, any eagerness to put professional training to good use is muted by my anxiety about long-distance motherhood. What will I miss, while she is tripling her vocabulary every day, and I am searching for succint and diplomatic ways to render difficult news...while she is learning to dress herself and I am donning the same uniform every day? It is impossible to know how we will both feel about the experience afterward, but during this anticipation, I watch her a lot for clues. She is, after all, the person I've most recently watched undergo a transformation, and I wonder what secrets of bravery and contentment I can learn from her that might help carry me through this separation.
My best thought so far is expressed in Psalm 3: "To the Lord I cry aloud, and He answers me...I lie down and sleep, I wake again because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear the tens of thousands on every side." (verses 4-6, NIV) Because I know too many combat veterans, new parents, and babies alike who cannot sleep through the night, this verse has become my special prayer. Beyond my obsession with getting enough good sleep, this verse is a picture of secure attachment between child and caregiver, God and God's children.
Rarely anymore do we hear our daughter sound the panic alarm, as she has expanded her repertoire to include monosyllabic chants, moans, and whinings that tell us she is trying to soothe herself as she drops off to sleep. Once in a while, she can still sound the sorrowful note we first learned to swiftly comfort--the one that sounds like she has surely been abandoned to starvation and the elements. It is horrific to hear, and it is a pleasure to alleviate her fears with our presence. In a very real sense, we sustain her between waking and sleeping, and in doing so mirror all the duties of our Divine parent. It is easier to feel oneself washed, wrapped, fed, and warmed by the Creator when you see a baby's panicked or peeved face give way to pure contentment.
So much of our daughter's infant angst seems to stem from being so alert--she has always been just aware enough of her surroundings to be very concerned, unable to filter out what is easily overwhelming. A combination of swaddling, shushing, rocking, and sucking would interrupt her panic enough to help her withdraw into a private, restful place where she could tune out what was bothersome. As I consider this new irritant in my environment--the prospect of a long separation from my daughter and husband for the first time--I am reminded that this month's happy crawler under the tree has never really started from scratch as she adapts to her world. She always falls back on the raw materials and parameters given to her: the limits of a room, the waking hours in a day, the genetic makeup she inherited, the now-familiar responses she can trust from her parents and other caregivers.
She also is a breathtaking example of cognitive development, situating new knowledge in meaningful ways within the context of what she already knows. When she acquired her first xylophone mallet earlier this week, it went first (predictably) into her mouth, under the acute visual scrutiny of one raised eyebrow, and then finally into repeated contact with the colored keys to replicate the sounds she'd seen her dad make. I am taking a page out of her book: like a securely attached infant, I am deciding to tackle this new problem as I have tackled others in the past--with hope, with prayer, and in the context of community. Like a late-night diaper change or a protested snot-clearing operation, it will certainly get worse before it gets better, but God is responsive, loving, and knows what to do. This week I will rest in that, and be glad that most deployments are down to nine months nowadays. Happily, I have living, low-crawling proof that I can do just about anything for nine months.
