THE GOLDEN KEY

What lessons babies are, so many lessons in all the things we've forgotten we knew, lessons we perhaps need badly by the time the babies come around, and perhaps even moreso when their babies come around, and we have at last the time and inclination to be instructed in these eternal arts, perhaps the biggest lesson being that babies smile and cry so easily, so freely, so fully; and as for happiness, give them a bright ball and a crust of bread and they are in heaven.

How have we undone this skill in ourselves? How is it that as we grow, we push heaven and its happiness further and further away from our every moment?

I look at the twins with all their easy smiles, their frequent giggles, their utter fun, their heartfelt, shortlived tears, their soul’s fascination with even a speck of paper on the floor, and I wonder how it came to be that former children cannot be so easily and genuinely joyfilled…

And now that Kaya and the twins have departed for their home up north, they leave a vast (and perversely welcome) silence in which to ponder these things, perhaps discover a tiny door I never saw before, beside it a golden key…

SPEAKING OF BABIES...

Traditional Japanese baby slings are better than baby carriages and framed baby carriers, for lots of mama/baby/economy/ecology reasons. In Spain, we used one we made out of an old furoshiki. I used to see baby slings all the time in Japan, years ago, but they faded away as too old fashioned. Now they're making a comeback, as do all things born of pure wisdom. Here's a good place to get them.

GOODNESS AND JOY

Well, the newborn twins are with us for a while, and are they ever new. And since we know from experience that newborn newness is as temporary as a dewdrop we are making the most of it, short of keeping the little sleepies awake too long.

After each of the babies in my life has grown up, I've somehow managed to forget how tiny newborns are, a lapse absolutely corrected by the next newcomer. Throughout their ephemeral awakenings, how wrinkly and skinny and endearing they are, with their tiny actual legs and feet with genuine toes, hands and fingers that work, professional yawns as though they've been yawning all their lives, which in fact they have been.

Between yawns they lie there patiently, practicing all the many faces, smiling a full-bloom smile before they even have a sense of humor; then there's a look of heartbreaking disappointment, hopefully never to be used, but practiced nonetheless. And rage, and glee and other excitements: all rehearsals.

Even when their kitten-cries pierce the air like arrows, carry upstairs and downstairs, penetrate thick walls and doors and bring instant silence to the most important adult conversation, they aren't really crying, they aren't in actual despair; like humor, that also requires personal experience of the highs and lows of the world out there, for which they're busy rehearsing. So as they weep and laugh it is our pleasure to feel it on their behalf.

And before they drift off to sleep, they watch for miracles with those bright brown eyes, as the faces of ancestors drift through their own by the minute, as clouds through a sky: there is their mother in the smile; now their father about the eyes, then the look of an uncle of mine, and then the young face of my mother, as they pass through all the faces they have come from, including me, I guess. It is startling to see one's own memories flow across those tiny others, who just got here. At no moment in our lives are we apart from eternity.

Hence the familiar ancient feeling one feels, on peeping in through the bedroom door to see them at last asleep: two tiny quiet bumps in the coverlet beside each other, two tiny lifesteps out into the world that we will do our best to ensure are continued on pathways of goodness and joy.