The baby slid into our lives one day earlier this month. I can’t recall exactly which particular day, but the day was particular for the sliding.
Doctors inspect, find all parts present and correct, a girl. Parents check: not simply present and correct, but perfect, their girl child.
Grandparents arrive, enter the dimmed room, quieting exultation. They sight the child, suppressing gasps of joy.
They behold, astonished by smallness, their newest beloved. Already, immediately beloved.
Lips a circlet of pink, the baby in stillness. Parents drained – but for now – electric with joy, unaware of their deepening sleep deficit, aware only of baby, baby, baby, miracle, fact, miracle.
What is this love that bursts into being? This finer, purer love, this love that seeks nothing of the child, this love that demands nothing beyond that she be? This love, this agape? The grandparents are certainly agape. At this child, this miracle, fact, miracle.
In the quiet and stillness, in this room, tenderness has her domain. This room contains a new human person who sleeps, whose lips flicker and semaphore mystically. She sleeps and she teaches love.