This was simply something I sat down and wrote one day. Before being placed here, I don't believe it was ever read by anyone. Maybe it still won't be. :-)
Iain was born at 1:10 A.M. the morning of Thanksgiving, in the year 1992. He is my wife and my first child. And like all first parents, we knew out lives would change, and we knew that we would change. I considered myself to be pretty well informed on what having a new baby around was like; I was woefully incorrect -- having a child around is something you really can't imagine until it actually happens. But sometimes I look back on who I was before Iain and I'm amazed not only at how much I've changed, but in the ways I've changed.
Sometimes understanding comes slowly, but sometimes something happens that thrusts you into new knowledge about yourself you've never seen before. That happened to me this morning.
I'd thrown a tape of various songs I'd made years back into the tape player to listen to as I went to work. Suddenly I was really listening to the song that was playing. I knew the song, knew how it ended, and yet I was listening to the song in a way I never had before.
The song was called "A Very Short Story", and was written by the late Harry Chapin. Harry Chapin was a big supported of the Hunger Project. This song is about a baby born, who's mother can't eat enough to support herself, let alone eat enough to produce breast milk for the child. It is told in the first person, from the baby's point of view.
It has some very vivid, tragic moments...
As the song ended there were tears running down my face. It was now far too personal. It was now a song that in some way I could identify with. Iain was never in danger of starving. My wife breastfed, and for the first week or two both she and Iain had a hard time with it, but still Iain was never in danger of dying from starvation."[Mama] squeezes her breast but has nothing to provide Someone weeps. I fall asleep."
"It is my seventh day. I taste the hunger, and I cry.."
"It is twenty days today. Mama does not hold me anymore."
"Above me a cloud slowly crawls across the sky. Why is there nothing left to do but die?"
But now I knew what is was like to hold a newborn baby. I knew what is was like to want to protect him, to keep him from all harm. In some sense I knew what it was like to not be able to provide for my child. And yet, I know I can't imagine the pain a mother would be in should she not have the means to feed her child -- to simply provide enough food that her child would not die. This kind of pain I never want to feel.
It seems that when it comes to children, to little ones that we should cherish, that we should protect, I find so many things bring tears to my eyes that never had before. I find myself wondering what the fate of some child somewhere that has had some wrong done to him or her. And I pray that nothing like any of these things ever happens to Iain.
Just two days ago I watched scenes of Baby Jessica -- no longer really a baby -- taken from the only parents she has ever known to live with virtual strangers. And while I feel for both sets of parents, it's nothing like the anguish I feel for Jessica, too young to choose or to truly understand what is happening. All she knows is that she's being forced to go with strangers and that she isn't going to see Mommy and Daddy again. And I cried.
Or perhaps I'll read Dr. Seuss's "The Lorax" to Iain. I used to love the book for its message. I still do, but in recent weeks I haven't been able to finish the book without tears in my eyes. The message of veiled hope, especially in a subject so dear to my heart is sometimes very hard to take.
But the real importance here is to say I've changed. I look at the world through different glasses than I did before Iain was born. I still see it as an adult, but I also see some of the wonder and joy that the world is to a child. And, unfortunately, I also see some of the pain that the world holds for some of our children. I've worked for many years for environmental causes. I once did it because I believed it the right thing to do. Now I do it out of love. Love for a child that must someday live in the world that I leave, for a child that will reap the earth that you and I sow. I work for these causes because I want a world as free and clean as is possible, and I want this for my son.
And if I'm more emotional, perhaps it's because suddenly I know what a parent feels for their child. I know how hard it would be to have to give up Iain now, at eight months,and can't imagine what it would be like at over two years. I know the love I feel for my child, how vulnerable children are, and I can't imagine intentionally causing a child pain. It really is completely foreign to me.
Yes, Iain has changed me, made me more aware of a world with children. More aware of how so many people feel with their own child. And at the same time given me many more questions that I I'll never be able to answer by myself about how some parents can do the awful things they do to children.
But it's all for the better. I can't imagine a world without Iain at this point in my life. And I don't really want to.