12/20/10 The company of babies
Babies still have that fresh out newness, that smell of bubbles and teeny roses, that reminds us of why we chose to be human in the first place. I'm thinking now of how my year-old niece reaches toward what she wants. She's not shy. She wants it and she reaches, with chubby little fingers. Or shuns things she wants to avoid. She doesn't want to be picked up. She turns away, reaches the opposite direction. Cries when she's upset...by gas, noise, people, temperature, hunger, scratchiness, what-have-you. She cries. So simple. I'd like to do that. A hundred times a day at my job. Twenty times a day at home. When you're a baby, you get to do it any time. And smile. You get to smile and change the world when you do it. A baby's smile is, well, it's one of the seventeen wonders of the world, no--there have been so many babies...it is one of the seven and a half billion wonders of the world.