I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Babies have got it right; they’re the only ones who really know how to live life. Babies are too young to have been properly thought-programmed by their elders. They don’t yet know to believe that money, fame, the right street, the right career, the right person, or the right pair of shoes is what makes for happiness. A baby’s happiness comes from whatever is in front of them at the moment. It bubbles up uncontrollably, not because of some particular outside influence, but because the happiness is in them already—all they do is let it out. Because they habitually express what is in them, a baby lives a life of complete authenticity. If they don’t like something, they spit it out, stop playing with it, or refuse to pick it up in the first place. They never second-guess themselves, they like what they like, want what they want, and do what they do because it’s inherent in them to be that way. Babies live completely as they are, acting just as they were created. They cry when they’re sad or angry, laugh when they’re happy, eat when they’re hungry and sleep when they’re tired. And they never worry about anything. They don’t obsess over what happened yesterday or spend all their time thinking about what they’re going to do tomorrow. A baby lives for what’s happening now. Have you ever watched a baby discovering something new? Their whole existence becomes about that one moment of discovery. Even if you try to distract them, you can’t. But when they’ve learned all they can, they move on to the next discovery in the next moment. Life for a baby is an endless string of pearled moments of discovery, one after the other. Because a baby lives in this present way, they never hold a grudge. They may be upset and crying one moment, but when the next moment rolls around, they’re smiling, laying a head on your shoulder, forgiving whatever wrong-doing you may have committed. Babies also don’t know how to judge yet. A baby does not care about the color of another baby’s skin, their religion, or in what country they were born. To them, there’s just another baby—quite like themselves. And they will smile at anyone from any denomination who takes a moment to try and make them smile. Babies love like this because they haven’t yet learned how to hate. I wonder sometimes what our world would be like if we weren’t so conditioned by our up-bringing’s, if our worlds of influence did not fill our heads with ideas of who and what we should be, who and what we should like, who and what we should hate. I wonder, what kind of a world it would be if we took a few lessons from those younger than we and lived, in certain aspects, the life of babies.
Tag: Life
Grateful
It’s easy to be grateful this year, even for the simple things like being able to inhale an easy breath. Nothing quite like asthma to give you a healthy appreciation of the inhalation. Last night, in the pleasant cool of the November evening, I felt how good the air was in my lungs, how cool and clean. I felt how easy it was to draw breath and I could detect each scent all tangled up within the air; wood smoke, and the rich, slightly acrid scent of dead leaves, faint pine, and trailings of the dinner I had fed to the puppies earlier. I inhaled DEEPLY and pulled all that darkness and starlight, leaves and wood smoke into my lungs. It’s a simple joy, breathing–one too often overlooked.
I have more complicated things to be grateful for. I am happy my husband and children are alive and well. Some of us might not have been after the accident last year. It still gives me joy just to look at them and every action I have taken throughout this year was colored by the uncertainty of life. We never know when our moment will come due. This is why today is so important.
I am grateful for my writer-friends, who gave me a piece of myself I had overlooked–one of the best parts of me as it turns out. I spent months, cocooned in a lovely cabin and then packed my things and branched out on my own, setting out to see if that high mountain pass is, indeed, traversable. I’ll be back, though, so keep the coffee hot for me. I wouldn’t mind a scone, while we’re at it.
I am grateful for my health–which started out bad this year and went down hill! I was diagnosed with hideous allergies, then undiagnosed–sort of. I don’t feel much differently than I used to–less itchy, I guess, thanks to the antihistamines, but the doctors still don’t really know what’s go awry in my system. I don’t care to dwell on it anymore, I am alive and well (mostly) today–what else matters?
I am grateful for my extended family members–of which there are many–my close community and my extended community that I am coming to cherish more and more each day. I am even grateful for my job. I guess anyone employed would say this at the moment, but even without the recession-induced threat of termination lurking in the back of any mind–I would still be grateful to work where I do with the people who are like a new family to me now.
Life is not perfect. It never is. It is wild and changing, full of heartbreak, joy, passion, and love. At least my life has always been. A crazy ride, being me. But I like it and so it is easy to be grateful tonight.
Happy Thanksgiving. I wish you love and passion, gratitude, joy and peace.
❤ and Blessings,
La
Things That Go Bump in the Road
Things That Go Bump in the Road
We were late. All four kids were rushed out of the house by two harried parents and into the Ford Expedition. My husband was driving. Our eighteen year old, a fourth member of our dance quarto, had gone ahead of us in his little Toyota. The other two dancers, our nine year old and I, were dressed in black skirts and stockings, ready to skip to the Irish reel and jig. We had been practising for 10 weeks and this was to be one of my daughter’s first performances.
Life does not always go as planned.
Our twelve year old daughter had left her purse at a cousin’s house so we had to make an extra stop on the way. It had snowed the night before, sugar dusting all of Virginia with less than an inch of fluffy, white powder. By the time we were on the road, just after noon on Sunday, it was nearly forty degrees and a bright, clear sunny day.
No remnants of the first winter snowfall remained on the road as we drove to the top of the hill.
Getting the purse had added pressure. We were only minutes behind schedule, but that was enough for us to be going at a steady clip heading down the long hill. Not speeding—it’s impossible to exceed the limit on those winding roads—but moving along quite nicely in an attempt to make it to the recital on time, just cruising on a Sunday on a road we knew well and had driven over a thousand times in twenty-five years in all kinds of weather.
The eldest had their i-pod on and was reading, settling in for the hour-long drive. The two little ones were laughing and messing around with each other. The middle daughter was sorting through the recently retrieved purse and I was inhaling my salad in the front seat, trying to fuel-up for our dance performance.
Life; busy and hectic as usual. No sense of foreboding, no brilliant flash of insight, my only thought when I saw the ice on the road was for my son, driving ten minutes ahead of us. We were in a four-wheel drive, he was just in that little Toyota.
My husband swore as we hit the front edge of the first ice patch and reached down to make sure we were in all-wheel drive. We were, but it wouldn’t do us any good.
We hit the second patch and he knew we were in trouble. He turned into the skid as we began to slide. I imagine we were going about 40 miles per hour but we hit the ice on a steep down-slope and picked up speed as we careened off the right hand side of the road, dropped into a ditch and headed straight for a set of mail-boxes.
I thought, “We’re going to hit those mailboxes.” And I remember the feeling of horror and dismay, knowing we were going to have an accident and no way to prevent it.
That was the moment everything went hay-wire.
We only clipped the mail boxes. Our trajectory changed. I closed my eyes just before we slammed into the boxes—I’m a horrid chicken at times like this—when I opened them, we were airborne. We had careened at high speed back across the road, hit a culvert, where a pipe went under the driveway, and sailed over the gravel lane. We hit railroad ties lining the drive on the other side and sent one flying thirty-feet into a field. We crashed landed through a fence, plowed straight over a wooden post that bent like a toothpick. It didn’t slow the truck at all. Ahead, in the field, we could see the tree coming. Eyes wide open, this time, I watched as we barrelled towards it. There was no way to avoid that tree, no time to think, or even react before we hit. I could see doom looming, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
The impact came with a force I was not familiar with, not from falling off a dozen different horses. It started in my low back and ricocheted all up my spine. My head flung forward and my chin hit my chest. I know now why they call it whiplash. My husband and daughter in the driver’s side both screamed in pain. We had stopped, but to what? He shouted, “Don’t anybody move! Stay exactly still!” Immediately, I turned to look at the kids, feeling the strange looseness in my neck and back. They were all staring back at me, eyes wide with shock and pain. All of them awake, alive. Two started crying.
I knew we were supposed to stay put, I had had my CPR training, but I looked back to the front and saw the mangled hood of the truck. My husband was shouting for a cell-phone. There were four in the truck, somewhere. I began frantically looking for mine. It had been charging in my cup-holder but I couldn’t find it. I traced the cord and pulled it from the floor, handed it to my husband. I looked back up at the crumpled front end.
“We’re getting out of here.” I said.
I don’t know what makes a vehicle explode, but I was not willing to wait and see if ours would. I got out, moving with difficulty and had the kids get out, looking them over as they left. Our little boy was bleeding on his lips. I took the edge of his shirt to wipe the blood. Slowly, we climbed the hill and the kids sat on the remaining rail-road tie. By then, my husband had stopped someone on the road who actually had a cell-signal—my phone didn’t—and they called the rescue squad. He also called my sister, an RN.
I looked down at my kids, all crying and shivering in the brisk wind. I took off my coat and wrapped it around the nine year old, wrapped my scarf around the twelve year old. My husband came over and looked at me. We knew how lucky we were,
“It’s good they’re all crying.” He said, “It means they’re all alive.”
“My feet are cold.” My littlest one said. I looked down, he was missing a shoe.
“Mine, too.” The nine year old was missing both of hers.
I noticed my feet were also cold, both of my shoes were gone as well. Where were our shoes? I hobbled back down to the car and found them. I didn’t know you could hit something so hard it would knock your shoes off. One of mine was jammed up under the dashboard where the impact had driven part of the engine into the car. It was a while later that I realized my shin was bleeding and I had a bone-bruise as a result of the engine’s movement.
The EMT’s arrived and put collars on the older four of us and hauled us off in two ambulances on back-boards. The littlest two children seemed to have escaped nearly unscathed, and went home with my RN sister, to be checked out later by our Family doctor.
In the end, we have five cases of whiplash with a lot of pain and stiffness during any kind of movement. My husband was the most gravely hurt with a herniated disc in his lower spine as well as a small laceration to his scalp.
This week, for me, has been a dazed blur, partly due to the combination of pain-killers and muscle relaxers they prescribed for me, mainly due to a kind of numb gratitude. I didn’t know I could feel so grateful. I feel as if I am living in a dream-world, or walking on a cloud. Just the sound of their voices and the sight of my husband and children fills me with an intense, stunned love.
I don’t know why we were so lucky, why all of us were spared. It isn’t easy to total an Expedition. The tree was twelve inches in diameter. We hit with such force, we uprooted it, yet, in essence, we all walked away. I know one day, my name will be called and I will leave this earth to join my maker. I know one day, we will all be called. “Why not now?” is a question that has no answer, yet I can’t help asking.
In the end, I suppose, it just wasn’t our time.
(Photo by Nataraja Bertram)
Lakshmi Bertram 