How does it make any sense?
How does it comfort me, your rubbery
smile that you express with your whole little tiny body, your arms, legs, flailing
in delight, your eyes like the sunrise?
“It’s like he’s fond of
us,” I say. “It’s the weirdest thing. There’s fondness in his smile.”
I feel like you know me,
little boy, I feel like those baby-blue eyes of yours are inexplicably old, set
in your brand-new face.
And who am I talking to, anyway? To you, Abba, or to the
baby bearing your name?
Let me talk to you, then, Abba. If you don’t mind. If you
can spare the time to listen.
Or is time meaningless where you are? Is it nothing but a
human creation for the very human need for things to happen first, second, and
then third, with the third thing being a result of the first and the second
things?
I don’t know about any of that stuff. I don’t really know
how any of this works. All I know is that when we named him after you the one
who had been the baby of the family eight days before needed my attention and when
I heard them announce your name the tears that came to my eyes were less about
that and more just the vague results of happiness mixed with exhaustion and
because I hated to hear my baby cry.
And then there were the dazed weeks, the weeks of
transitioning from three kids to four and feeling like I love them all so much
but oh G-d help me they’re everywhere and
they sense just when I pour myself a mug of hot coffee or finally close my
eyes. I wasn’t doing too much thinking then, and anyway he was just “baby,” or “sweetie”
you see, too small to carry something as big as a name, but now…
Now Baruch is smiling.
How does it make any sense,
the comfort I feel?
I confess that I needed comfort because my friend’s father
came to visit and I was jealous because there he was and there you weren’t, so
I gave them a heartfelt bracha in my head like I always do when I am unfairly
envious of someone else’s good fortune.
So, anyway, Abba, past my shameful human frailties—if there
is such a thing as past human frailties—when I hung up the phone with my
friend, I walked over to your picture, ostensibly to dust it because it
suddenly needed dusting and tears sprang
to my eyes.
I miss you. I miss you miss you miss you, but the memories
of you are interwoven with the words that I’ve written about you and became trite
almost, reduced to catchphrases and things to tell the children about their
Sabba whom they barely remember.
But thankfully no turn of phrase could ever really describe
your smile, Abba, the one you wore through it all. (And you’ve been through it
all.) So I think, sometimes, not about who you were or what you’ve done but
just about your smile, about the warmth and fondness found in your hard-earned
smile.
But back to my linear, limited story where things happen
first and second and then third with the first and second causing the third—because
that’s the only way I know how to tell a story Abba, so please forgive me— there
I was, crying.
And there he was, the baby bearing your name, and he was smiling
at me, his first smile, smiling fondly with his eyes and mouth and arms and
legs, his whole body one big smile.
And how does it make any sense—it
doesn’t make any sense—
The comfort that floods all through me when I bask in the
glow of my Baruch’s smile.
