More thoughts on babies

Sometimes when I'm out and walking around i start thinking about things and before I know it, I'm heavily and deeply in thought, and it's a wonder that i don't completely lose track of myself and things around me. I have approximately 50 friends who've had babies recently so i was thinking about babies and all of the cliches you hear, like "oh they grow up so fast,"  "they change everyday."   And how it's difficult for people to let go of their baby, to accept that they're not a baby anymore, their baby is growing up, blah blah blah.

Well, first of all, I completely feel that way, so I am a cliche.  Second of all, why is there that attachment to their babyhood?   I wondered.  I thought about it some more and thought, maybe it's because you work so friggin hard at something that displays so few results over such a long period of time, results so few and far between that you can't possibly comprehend that there is actually something happening, that you are doing things that make a difference, until way way after the fact, so that when you are able to look back and realize they're not even a baby anymore and you are in shock about it because you JUST got to a point where you were able to accept that you might have learned something through all the tears and sweat and curse words and the giving and the giving and the giving.  All of that ridiculously hard work. And before you know it, without your consent or acknowledgment, they are a part of you and you're like, what the hey? when did THAT happen?  It actually sealed it to you, sewn into your being, and forever and ever more, there will be a spot in your guts the exact size and measurements of your baby, and it will always be that size.  It's the trauma of it. The trauma of your first baby made it a part of you.  You always think of trauma being negative, but babies aren't all bad. But it's so traumatic. And is that what seals them?

And then i thought, i wonder if there are similar things in life. Other traumas.  Like, something that is a part of someone for a long time that they work so hard at, then maybe one day it's different, or gone, or changed.  Like someone who has cancer and it has become a part of them, physically, and then one day they're finally free of it.  I wonder what that's like for them.  Obviously they must be happy, but is it weird? Do they feel a weird sick void? Is it weird to deal with? And then I thought, did i just compare my baby to a cancer? 

Well, anyway.  Sometimes I hold Julian in my arms like a long gangly baby and I talk to him like he's 3 months old and say, "Are you my baby??"  and he responds, "baby go??"   because i've said to him too many times, "where did my baby go??"   And then my heart whimpers pathetically and i give him a zerbert in his belly, where i bury my face and my woes.