Metro Pulse/Midpoint

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Embracing the present

by Stephanie Piper

I knew a moment of perfect peace last week, occasioned by the visit of a newcomer.

My guest was a friend's infant daughter. She arrived recently from a place of watery darkness, making her earthly debut well before the appointed day and unleashing a flurry of prodding, clucking and attachment of beeping devices. Now thriving, she's up to visits. And last week, she came to visit me.

I have a thing about infants. I also love babies, and toddlers. Garrulous three-year-olds have their charms, and I am not immune to them. But it's the newborns, the just-barely-here ones, who draw me like a magnet.

I am drawn for all the obvious reasons, the warm scent and the petal skin, the feathery hair. But these are details. For me, the beating heart of the matter is clarity.

The care of an infant permits no ambiguity. Whether it's for an hour or for the foreseeable future, the job description is carved in block capitals. Keep her safe, warm, dry, fed. Keep her close. Keep her happy. The wonder of it is that, briefly, it's possible.

Later on, the clear directions will blur. The perfect food will lose its flavor, the neatly wrapped blankets will chafe and bind. The world will intrude, with all its hectic promises, and the song that never failed to soothe will falter.

But at the beginning, what you have is enough. The jiggling walk, the rocking stance, weight shifting from one foot to another in a steady rhythm. The wordless shshsh sound, the snatches of half-remembered lullabies: Sail, baby, sail, over the western sea. The nonsense names, bunny rabbit, lambie, sweetie-pie-cake. The fluid shift from crook of arm to shoulder, the sure hand behind the wobbly head.

For a few weeks or a few minutes, you are allowed to know with absolute certainty your place in the scheme of things. You have a job without a single shade of gray, and whether you're tired, or low, or overdrawn at the bank, the clarity remains.

My visitor stayed for 90 minutes, most of which she spent dozing in a portable cradle. I longed to see her awake, to see the transparent lids open, the milky blue eyes begin to focus. But she had her work to do, and I had mine.

Her job was breathing. My job was watching the rise and fall of a kimono patterned with yellow kittens. In, out. Up, down. Her minute hands waved, then settled. Her mouth turned up in a smile of surpassing sweetness. She stirred, twisted, made mewing sounds. I scooped her up; we walked. We rocked. I sang the old songs and rearranged her blankets and kissed the top of her head and told her she was a treasure.

Then I gave her back to her mother and the world flooded in, all half-measures and maybes. There's a time to every purpose under heaven, and my full-time infant minding ended decades ago. As for moments of perfect peace, I'm learning to take them as they come: always free, always clear and, occasionally, wrapped in a pink shawl.