March 30, 2003

• Tabula Rasa

  
  

   

  
  

  Newborn babies look nothing like those cute portraits you see at K-Mart or in Geddes cards.  Frankly, they’re pretty ugly and I know because I see them every day at all hours and always under the glaring stare of those damn artificial lights (St. Luke’s).  Soaked in a weird smelling mix of amniotic fluid and blood, a little squinting man leaves behind a constrained – yet I imagine comforting – world of a tiny womb and explodes into a frightening universe of clanging metal, beeping, clicking machinery, masked men and women scampering about in a frenzy of emotion, movement, sound.  His eyes not yet developed – it’ll take months – he can barely see a few feet in front of him and at that, the world is all lines, angles and blurs mixed together as he tries to make some collective sense of it all.  Imagine the sound and literal fury; a dark muted womb suddenly becomes an instantly forgotten memory and in its place, all of this.

  
  

   

  
  

  I wonder if he feels pain the way we do.  I mean, science would tell me that his neurons are just now beginning their most crucial formational development as his mind processes patterns and responses to patterns and structure to even the most basic elements of baby life.  What does he see.  Do we create reality or does reality exist apart from us.  Sure, it’s late but I’ve had my coffee.  Look at Orion or Ursula Major, just something we’ve concocted to give us something to point at when walking with our kids or trying to impress that girl with a crooked smile.  The flickering sky is a jumbled mess of beautiful dots and what’s to keep me from creating my own constellations.  The pieces are out there, sure.  But we create meaning.

  
  

   

  
  

  We’ve cut the cord and the little guy is going nuts.  All the crying disturbs some people but that’s just a baby’s way of saying, I’m here and what the hell is going on?   I don’t blame him.

  
  

   

  
  

  And here’s the mother.  Great poets speak of a birthing mother’s beauty.  Once again, I don’t see it.  From my experience, this is when they are at their patently most unattractive - screaming, cursing, crying, fainting.  Drenched in sweat and tears, it’s a very raw thing to behold.  Maybe that’s the beauty.  There’s nothing pretentious about a woman when she gives birth.  Maybe it’s the one scene in all Life that remains completely pure and natural and even primitive.  I suppose all truth is beautiful in some abstract cosmic sense.

  
  

   

  
  

  Strange how most all healthy babies calm down when held by their mother for the first time.  It’s the lullaby voice they’ve heard laughing and asking for ice cream over the past nine months.  Studies have shown they definitely prefer this voice above all others.

  
  

   

  
  

  Frankly, some of these ladies are not the best people.  But for that moment, they are.  No matter where they’ve been, this marks a new day in their lives and while a good number fail as mothers, those hours resting and loving are rife with hope.  I’m moved by that thought: a new start and a clean slate in a building sterile and isolated from all the madness outside.  Life is just so much noise.  The beeping EKG, the clank of bloody calipers, nagging wives, insensitive husbands, the tick of another bill dropped in the mail, cars honking, people pissed, toy factories pumping steam, bullets whizzing thousands of miles away, and the pop of my joints every morning.

  
  

   

  
  

  Exhausted, mother and child are asleep and everyone disbands to nap, gossip, or grab a cup of stale drip.  Just so much drama packed into one anesthetized room.  The quiet aftermath is pretty eerie but I find a nice dark corner and take a moment to breathe, absorbing the rhythmic whir and beating of all the machines.

  
  

   

  
  

  I scrub my hands thoroughly and change, thinking of Home, the morning outside.  I press my fists to my eyes, colors exploding before me.  A man is looking for something.  Here, in this blooming, buzzing confusion.

  
  

   

  
  

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  Matt11:28

  • 1:34 am
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