It's a little poem that Kelly, our neighbor, sent to me:
Cleaning and cooking can wait 'til tomorrow
For babies grow up, as we've learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep,
I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep.
I've just put Rowan down to bed. As I rocked him tonight, I felt connected to the world in a way that's difficult to express. This sense of connectedness was startling, perhaps for no good reason except that it was on two levels at the same time: the past and the present. For me, it's been nearly impossible to dwell in these two levels in the same instant, at least consciously. But there in the dark room in a soft chair I was rocking my beautiful baby. His face was inches from my own, and at first his eyes were open and looking at me in the dim light. Then he drifted to sleep, faint smiles of contentment appearing and disappearing quickly enough that they could have been easily missed. His breath changed and his arms relaxed; I knew he was asleep. I say truly that if I had treasured this moment any more than I did, if I had found a way to drink it in any deeper, I'm not sure I would have survived it.
So in rocking and sharing the very air I was breathing with my beautiful baby, I felt more connected to him than even when he was inside me. At the same instant, I felt connected to the mothers before me through the ages who have done this same thing: rocked their precious babies to sleep and marvelled at how things change. Did these mothers of past days feel the same as I? I ponder how the world sprints past while to me each moment feels frozen and imprinted on my memory like a shining gold medallion, intricate and treasured.
There is no way to truly capture this time. Photos and video are a feeble reflection of the living, breathing beauty of the now. No technology can even come close to recreating an experience so simple as rocking a baby. So I know that years from now, as my memories of tonight are cluttered by all the mundane and exceptional things that Rowan's life has in store for us, I may not be able to recall some details that now blaze so clearly and strongly in my memory. While occasionally the thought of forgetting gives me a twinge of pain, the agony is immediately overcome by knowing I am immersing myself, with all my heart, in now. I really don't know how the awe hasn't faded; I can't take credit for my constant state of amazement and gratitude. So, I just thank God for now. And I drink it in deep.