#27 Wonder

in sheer awe of life these days

Today’s journaling / reflection prompt: When was the last time you felt a sense of wonder? What did it feel like? What were you doing? Who were you with? How did that feeling land in your body, in your thoughts? What ways big and small can you do to create more wonder in your life?

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The inside of a baby’s ear looks nearly translucent. Against the backdrop of sunlight, you can see fine blood vessels on the skin, like fine hairs against lantern paper. If you stare at it long enough, the lines seem to dance, and you start to see the impossibly fine little hairs lining the outer edge of the ear, so ephemeral they seem to disappear when the baby shifts.

I know this because I am currently staring at the inside of my baby’s ear and have been staring at it for the last half hour, as she naps on my chest, arms crossed under her chin like that Raphael portrait of a cherub, one small doughy hand with perfectly even fingers clasped over the other.

She has started learning to smile, to babble lately, and every hour I am floored by how much she is growing. K and I joke about her becoming a new baby every day. “Where did you learn to do that, baby? What did you do with our baby from yesterday?”

It’s been nearly four months since T came into our lives and I’m still getting used to calling her “our daughter.” The phone calls I get most often these days are from care workers, “Is that T’s mummy? I’m calling to ask about your daughter…” And I can never say yes without a laughing smile, almost wanting to add “yes, and isn’t that amazing?”

Instead I just say simply, “yes, she’s my baby.”

So weighty, this word, “daughter” — its heft wrought from an overwhelming sense of protectiveness and duty that obliterates all other nuances of feeling. The knowing of what it means to be one, in all its delight and challenges, and what’s more terrifying, to be a “mother” to this creature that I’m still getting to know, whose little noises and expressions overwhelm me on a daily basis.

We gave her a name that can morph itself to many nicknames, and we elevated one above all others, even though there’s so many in play already. I always thought that nicknames were a sign of love — of someone putting their thumb print on that word you hold most dear to bridge the gap between you a bit closer, which is why I always loved when people made random nicknames out of my name even when it doesn’t naturally lend itself to any. But already — and perhaps, always — she’s our baby.

“Baby, baby” I croon to her when she cries, when she does a little smirk at me, trying to poo, when she raises her eyebrows out the side of her eyes at the doctor’s appointment. When she pouts her lips like an old man disgusted by the heat of the day, stretching her arms up high, fighting against sleep. When she first landed in a bundle on my chest after the disorienting, harrowing experience of birth. “It’s ok, baby. I’m here, baby.” After she came home, I started calling her baobao or baobei in Chinese which means baby and also, aptly, “treasure.”

“She is a wonder” I said in an email to a friend the other day, spontaneously stringing these words along, and then realising this simply encapsulated the entirety of the explosion of new experiences I’m having now in this season of life.

There’s so much more to say and nothing else, really. What do you say when your whole life is transformed? When you feel transfixed, every other moment?

The other day, we were asked if we remember what was it like before she came, and I could barely recall the feeling of past me. I can see that version of me at a distance, waving present me along with hope and fear, having been both reluctant and so eager to start this journey of motherhood. But the entire gravity and aperture of my life has shifted. I no longer think of me, or of us as a couple, but instead of how we can build, with purpose, over long days and short years, a small universe for her. What a privilege to becoming a world for my baby, still learning to be.

I’m sure more words will come. But for now, sending this small message in a bottle through the chaos and calm haze of newborn life to share, simply, she is a wonder and I’m in awe every day.

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Margin Notes

I won’t make promises on this but I must try to start writing a little more regularly, and not just every few years when there’s a huge life event..! Life has been so good to us and I feel very lucky to be in this current season. (Blame the baby for the typos, this was written hurriedly nap-side!)

Hoping you are doing well too, wherever you find yourself. -K

Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash

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