You Raise Me Up

It must be very frustrating to be a small child trapped in a world of knees and pants legs (and, let’s be honest, crotches and butts), never being able to see the interesting stuff that everyone is looking at.

Fortunately, a pair of adult shoulders makes a good perch, so giving Mom or Dad or Grandpa or Uncle Jim a puppy dog face will usually result in getting the best view in the house.

 

If one of the worst parts of childhood is being short, one of the best is being small enough to be lifted and tossed around by the adults in your life. It’s like having your own personal amusement park every time you can convince someone to pick you up. They’ll put you on their shoulders, they’ll swing you around like an airplane, they’ll throw you in the pool, they’ll let you dive off their knees, they’ll swing you back and forth like a pendulum. They’ll give you a sense of freedom like you’ve never experienced before – and like you’ll never quite be able to reclaim as an adult. It’s as close to flying like a bird as you’ll get any time in your life. And it’s as close to having perfect trust in another human being as you’ll get any time in your life.

And THAT’S flying high!

(Note: This is not my child. My husband knows my neuroses well enough to not capture a moment like this on film.)

 

 

 

The Universality of Babies

Last night we watched the movie, “Babies”. The film is a fascinating – and almost entirely wordless – documentary following four babies from different parts of the world through their first year or so of life.

The opening of the film shows a close-up of a heavily pregnant mother in Namibia grinding berries to make a kind of red dye that she uses to paint her belly. We see a seconds-old baby, still connected to her mother by her umbilical cord, in a modern hospital in Tokyo. We see an hours-old baby in San Francisco, hooked up to tubes and monitors in another modern hospital. And we see a days-old baby being tightly swaddled in blankets and tucked in his mother’s arms as she climbs onto the back of a motorbike, apparently for the trip back to her home in Mongolia.

As the movie progresses, each group of scenes seems to have a kind of a theme: how the babies eat, how the babies interact with their siblings and parents and pets, the various environmental dangers that the babies face. Some groups of scenes are remarkably similar, and some are literally worlds apart. We see each baby being fed by its parents – in three cases, being nursed by a mother, and in the fourth, being given a bottle by a father. The details may be different – the Namibian mother, for example, nurses her baby while sitting in the dirt, leaning over him to grind grain, while a second, slightly older baby nurses at her other breast, while the Japanese mother reclines comfortably in her bed as she nurses – but the essentials are universal. Even the sibling interactions are hilariously similar. The Mongolian baby sits in the middle of a yurt draped with colorful woven rugs and wails periodically as his older brother flicks him in the face with a scrap of cloth. The Namibian baby sits on the ground and periodically wails as his older brother pushes him away. One of the funniest sequences in the entire film is a series of scenes involving very patient and long-suffering family cats. We see one of the babies looking on as his brother pulls on a leash around the neck of a large (and recumbent) cat, the cat limply allowing itself to be dragged with an expression on its face that would certainly be an eyeroll, if cats could roll their eyes. We see another baby sitting with a similarly patient cat on his lap, roughly grabbing at the cat’s fur and ear as the cat simply lies there, apparently resigned to its fate. And in an especially hysterical transition, we then cut to one more cat, carefully sitting out of reach of a baby and watching it warily.

Even the scenes that show how different the babies’ upbringings are have a core of universality, though. We see the Namibian baby calmly playing in the dirt as a herd of cattle wanders around him, the solid, powerful hooves looking no less dangerous than the heavy, wicked horns. The Mongolian child lies on a rug-draped couch as a large rooster with huge, dagger-like spurs casually hops up and saunters past. The American child careens across a playground on a little car, plowing through a crowded sidewalk and face-planting magnificently in a large sandbox. The dangers may vary from place to place, but there are dangers in every environment, no matter how primitive or how progressive.

But aside from the anthropological fascination I found with the film, I was also fascinated with how much of Ryan I saw in each baby. From the funny little newborn facial expressions, to the wide-eyed curiosity, to the babbling and mouth sounds, to random objects going directly into the mouth, to the jelly-legged attempts to stand up, there was a sense of familiarity in every scene and with every child. The soft cooing and singing of the mothers as they rocked sleepy babies made me smile as I thought of myself doing the same thing. Even the tightening in my chest as I saw each baby in danger of being hurt was recognizable as a sensation felt by every parent in a similar situation.

Ryan is not exactly like any other baby that ever has or ever will be on this earth, but there are some things about his life that have been experienced by every other baby that ever has or ever will be on this earth. It’s a wonderful blend of uniqueness and commonality.

Fractals and Vectors

My sister and I have always been fascinated by physics. And between my college physics courses and her reading books by people like Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, we can usually come up with a reasonably scientific explanation for most physical phenomena. But every once in a while we come across something that defies explanation (to us, anyway). And when that happens, we always have the same response: “It’s fractals and vectors!” Anything we describe as “fractals and vectors” is beyond our comprehension.


Ryan has been studying physics in his own baby way of late. He’s discovered that balls rolls down a ramp but blocks don’t. He’s discovered that balls and things with wheels can be rolled back and forth between people. And just this morning he discovered that if he throws one of his stacking rings at the floor hard enough, it bounces. He spent twenty minutes throwing rings at the floor and curiously watching them bounce. Sometimes they would bounce directly back at him. Sometimes they would bounce away from him. Sometimes they would land on their sides and roll a few inches or even a few feet. And each time, he would pick the ring up, study it intently for a moment, wave it in the air a few times, and then bounce it off the floor once again. His curiosity was mixed with puzzlement. I could imagine him wondering, “Why does it sometimes come back and sometimes roll away?” And they I could imagine him deciding, “Oh! It must be because of fractals and vectors!”

At this stage in his life, everything must seem like fractals and vectors to him. He can’t possibly understand yet that round things roll and square things don’t. He hasn’t made the connection that sometimes he slips on the floor because he’s wearing socks and sometimes he sticks because his feet are bare. He hasn’t figured out that gravity is what makes him fall on his bottom when he lets go of the furniture, or what makes his toys fall on the floor when he lets go of them. He doesn’t have any idea why grabbing onto a book that’s sitting on the couch doesn’t stop him from falling over but grabbing onto the couch itself does. So many things that are easily explainable by an adult are a complete mystery to him.

And yet, I can tell that he’s slowly putting the pieces of the puzzle together. He’s no longer surprised that blocks don’t roll down the slide, or that the ball bounces off the wall when he pushes it, or that when he drops his toys they fall to the floor. He doesn’t understand why quite yet, but he does understand that things behave in repetitive, predictable ways. And that’s the beginning of understanding why they do what they do. For now, it’s enough. It’s fractals and vectors!

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Ever notice how children, especially babies, are completely fascinated by each other? When we’re out for a stroll, Ryan pays no attention to people walking dogs, but if someone has another baby in a stroller or a toddler alongside, he’s rapt. He reaches out to touch other children in a way he rarely reaches for adults. He seems to recognize the kinship, the sameness, of shared babyhood.

And older children are just as fascinated with babies. In a world where everyone is bigger than you, is allowed to do more than you, is ABLE to do more than you, it must be a powerful feeling to find someone who’s littler and more restricted than you. So it came as no surprise when my college friend Suzanne came to visit with her three young daughters that Ryan was an absolute hit.

The girls were all eager to hold him, feed him, cuddle him, and coo to him. They were fascinated to watch him bounce in his jumperoo, curious to see him play on his tummy, and delighted when he laughed at their antics. And he reveled in their attention! He spent the entire dinnertime bouncing in his chair, watching the girls eat their dinners, pausing every now and then to listen to the unfamiliar childish voices, and giggling at the faces they made for him. Mommy, Daddy, and Auntie Suzanne were just taking up space, for all he was concerned. He had found some new friends who were not quite as much bigger than him as most people he meets, and he didn’t want to miss a moment of their company!

He’s still developing a personality, so he can’t look for friends who are similar in temperament to him. He hasn’t figured out how to do much yet, so he can’t look for friends with similar hobbies or interests. But he’s little and curious and cute as a button, and he’s managed to find some new friends who have that in common with him.