Once upon a time, I was a mother of a little baby.
When she was a little flurb I used to delight in handing her off to people. Not just any people, only the people who obviously liked babies. That was my only criterion, though. I would pass her into waiting arms and watch the magic.
The magic was in her being-ness.
I was astounded by the power this little human had. She’d lie there, wrapped in her flannel and someone’s arms, and they’d get real.
Holding her made them happy, vulnerable, and present to the moment. Simply feeling
her little hand wrapped around one of their fingers could transform them. That little baby was more powerful than anyone I’d ever seen, and just by being.
I realize that a new mother responding to virtually anyone commenting on the cuteness of her baby with, “Wanna hold her”? is odd. It was an experiment. The outcome was the same every time.
My little daughter was completely vulnerable. She didn’t want anything from the people who held her. She just...was. And it seemed like whoever was holding her got lost in her world for a little while. They too became vulnerable. Like her, they were present in the moment. She couldn’t even stand and yet she seemed to have a comic book hero’s Super Power. She could melt people with her gaze.
Each of us was once a baby. We have remnants of that Super Power within us. We can love more powerfully than an angry word, and leap tall defenses with a single touch.
Physicists say that since all the material of our Earth is made from the material of the universe, then everything on Earth was once a star. Including us.
We are made of stardust. Maybe the Super Power of babies is that they’re still aware of that, somehow. Maybe they can see the stardust in the grown-ups that hold them, and what we love is that stellar reflection of ourselves in their eyes.
On these short days of December, we must take in light wherever we find it. Look in the mirror. See the light in your own eyes.