What is it about sleeping babies that pulls at our heart strings?
Surely the appeal isn't the thought of changing diapers and getting up four times each night. So is it that they're innocent. Or is it that they're vulnerable. Or, perhaps, it's that they're...quiet!! For whatever reason, when we see thumb-sucking, sleeping babies we move toward them with open arms wanting to cradle them.
I wonder if, deep down, we yearn for the days when life was innocent and simple. I wonder if, deep down, we yearn for the days when food just appeared on the table, when clean clothes appeared in our closets, and when we'd never heard of a mortgage. I wonder if, deep down, we yearn for the days when we were celebrated for merely existing.
And then I wonder how things would change if we all started buying someone a cup of coffee or saying, 'Thank you,' and, when asked why we shrug and reply, 'Because you're you!'
I wonder.
Sleeping babies remind us of a time
when we were celebrated for merely existing.
I find this particularly true now that Facebook has the following it does.. How quickly the birth of a child dies down..
ReplyDelete"A little Miracle today was born"
to a few years down the track
"Someone take ..... away - he is sending me insane"
Like the poem says, leave the fingerprints on the wall, they only stay small for so long!
You're so right, Kathy. When we were trying to have a child, I remember seeing parents in stores looking fed up with their children and promising myself that I'd never be that way. And I remember the first time I had to remind myself of that promise during a particularly taxing day with the children. How quickly we forget.
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