The Weight of Invisible Things
When our children are infants – tiny and howling, both precious and terrifying in their newness - we are spared the burden of explanation. The dark and scary parts of the world, while still present in the cobwebbed corners of our tired minds, are pushed aside in the chaos of swaddling, diapering, soothing, sustaining. While we worry over nap routines and developmental milestones, while we lament over stained onesies and fold tiny socks, the echoes of headlines and soundbites fade away into noiseless oblivion. Our task is singular, our focus unwavering: keep the baby alive.
There’s something comforting about this fleeting phase. Babies don’t ask questions; they don’t require answers. Tears and smiles, laughter and wailing, it is all the same – hold me, love me, please don’t go.
And then, it happens - over months and years, but somehow all at once. The chubby thighs become slender and agile, the steps grow measured and confident. Pacifiers, once glued to silent mouths, are left behind in favor of words and giggles. Books become books, objects to study and absorb rather than gum and chew. A baby becomes a toddler becomes a child, and the things that seemed so certain now seem foggy: the tears and the smiles, the laughter and the wailing – it’s not all the same, after all. Do you want me to hold you? Do you love me? Please, don’t go.
As I write this, my daughter is not quite a baby but not quite a child, either. Each day I watch in awe and fear as she barrels towards skinned knees and school, first friends and first heartbreaks. And although I cheer each time she makes another leap towards independence, I also lament what I am losing: the certainty that what I can give her is enough, that my love is enough.
I don’t usually pay attention to the news. (Like I mentioned – the mundane yet all-encompassing tasks of infancy don’t often allow for such adult pursuits.) But how can you ignore the sounds of bombs falling on maternity hospitals? How can you tear your eyes away from photos of bloodied children, of shrieking mothers and fathers? And then, the questions that inevitably follow: what will my children think when they realize what kind of world they inhabit? What will I tell them?
The headlines suddenly become too much to bear. When did it become so hard? When did becoming a parent become something else entirely, something impossible and foreign, something so heavy with consequence that it feels almost suffocating? Hold me, love me, please don’t go. We long for a return to the simpler days: those never-ending, bone-wearying days when we couldn’t sleep or shower or eat, but our arms and our kisses were enough to shield our children from the storms outside our doors. When our children demanded no answers except those found in the crook of an arm, or the rising and falling of a chest.
While she’s still too young to understand the realities of pain and suffering, I know that a day will come when my daughter finds herself face-to-face with a world she does not recognize. I know that the carefree days of swing sets and dolls will not last and will be replaced with days of doubting and searching. When those days come, I pray that I have the courage to say to her what I know to be true – the things I have learned from my own restless days of doubting and searching:
The darkness may win the battle, but never the war. Sirens will wail and bombs will fall, but amid the wreckage there will always be mothers and fathers holding babies close, singing songs of flowers and of wind, of peace and of joy, of all that is good and beautiful. Listen and you will hear it – the quiet yet unmistakable sound of love, the beginning and the ending of all things. Listen, and let it be enough.
