toward innocence
Layers of attachment. Henry teaches me. Because in the beginning I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I didn’t understand how innocent he was. I didn’t believe that someone could be all-good as he is. All-knowing and all-not-knowing.
In the beginning he would cry and cry and there were thoughts from us — is he manipulating us? A nurse came over and saw me nursing Henry when he was two days old and laughed, He’s ruling the roost! He’s using you as a pacifier! And I wasn’t sure what to believe. A boy. And boys grow into liars and teasers sometimes. I didn’t know how to behold this kind of beauty.
He opens up my arms and releases any tension in my lungs. He does no wrong. He manipulates nothing and no one. His want is his need. Transparency.
Gisele Bundchen had her baby about a month before Henry was born. Ah, my obsession with celebrities. And maybe it’s that English is her second language, but when she speaks, it’s translated to sound almost mythical. Interviewers asked about her birth and she said that it wasn’t painful, she said that she kept thinking, with every moment of intensity, I am getting closer to meeting my child. They asked her what his name is, and she said he has no name, to her he is simply her beloved. She said to look at him is like looking in the face of an angel.
It sounded too cheesy at first, but of all the things I’m supposed to be reading and analyzing, Gisele Bundchen’s words stick with me. Looking in my child’s face is like looking in the face of an angel. Like looking into a clear white sky. Transparency and innocence. It irons out the pain in my shoulders and the dissonance in my heart. He has no name. My beloved. My sweet boy. We are born pure, I didn’t understand until now. This most beautiful boy.
