Then it happens. One day, they are barely looking and the next they are looking out the window at the green, summery world as if they have been welcomed into the Garden of Eden.
One of the photos accompanying this column is from the sofa in front of the window. It includes Dougie the Puggy and our grandson, Henry, the newest addition to the Benham household down the street from us.
Dougie has been a good sport about sharing this perch with its dog’s-eye view of the sidewalk and the downtown street with Henry’s big sister, Nora, and now he seems to be exhibiting similar largesse with 3-month-old Henry.
Nobody needs to remind us how fast it goes. There are moments when clocks hardly seem to move and the space between 9:57 and 9:58 has to last more than 60 seconds but that’s rare.
Mostly the clocks race, days follow one another like wind sprints, as do the weeks and years that elude our efforts to fix or quiet their pace.
Then we get a reprieve. A rest. We can thank babies for a break in our sincere efforts to become total lunatics.
Time slows down when you’re watching the first three months of a baby’s life. Babies go from impossibly small to bigger, from dreamy to clear-eyed and from aliens to children who look like they floated out of a Raphael painting.
Their expressions change from “Where am I and how did I get here?” to “How did I get so lucky?”
Then they smile. When they smile the first time, the first 10 times, it will knock you off your feet, even if you have good balance and are wearing sturdy shoes. It is the most unexpected and surprising thing and at the same time, the purest and most natural. It’s as if you were hiking on a hot day and you’d come upon a spring on the side of a mountain that had the coldest sweetest water you’ve ever drunk.
You think you’ve had refreshing water, but this is something else. You want to stop drinking but you can’t. You thought you were thirsty but didn’t know you were this parched.
You think you’ve known love, and maybe you have but when a baby smiles for the first time, you know that whatever love you have been lucky enough to have experienced was born from this. From here but not from here.
There is nothing like a baby’s smile. How does a face this small radiate such joy. This much light. This much happiness.
It’s like a magic trick — except without the trick. It’s just magic.
Children, once settled and having navigated the normal bumps of newborns, seem like messengers from another world telling us without speech that life is good and that love will prevail in the most harrowing times and can transform the hardest hearts.
It’s easy to go off the rails here. Lose your grip on the grim certainty of life. Like that’s a bad thing.
What choice do we have? A baby smiles and that smile is an invitation: Put down your phone, open your eyes, come home.
July 26, 2020 at 02:00PM
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HERB BENHAM: Embrace the magic of baby's first smile - The Bakersfield Californian
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Herb
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