hearts cracking wide

I had forgotten what a different land new babyhood is.  

Time has a different viscosity.  It doesn't behave the way we think it should.  It slows down to the pace of a nursing baby and mama.  The day looks like a dance between nesting spots; follow the pillows, the blankets, the cloths, the diapers and see where we have all been with the newest little bird.  

I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. 

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

These days are all about the "broad margins".  What else is there to do, really, than to watch expression move across this baby's face, like the play of sun and clouds? Forced to put down everything else, to simply witness the unfolding of a human. Every day his gaze seeks a slightly wider sphere, and his peaceful watching lasts longer and longer.  His legs kick and stretch, his arms make gentle arcs through the air, and he practices his "inside smiles...(which are) a beautiful reflection of an inner feeling of rightness" (Dr. Sears, The Baby Book)  

This baby is having some serious feelings of rightness.

One Week! photo by Ben

I am blessed a thousand times over to have spent these few days with this family. My heart is cracked wide with the joy and sorrow of loving.

four days old