rhythm

Its 8:00 A.M. and I have been up for 3 hours already. Lukas is down for his first nap. He has a cold and is more sleepy than usual. It’s strange how life is all about creating rhythm for him. I have never had such a strong and clear rhythm to my day and yet I feel like I have lost my personal rhythm, my busy, rushing, feel important rhythm. Now I follow someone else. I follow him. I spend all morning trying to manipulate his rhythm so that he will be in the right mood to go out when I want to. It isn’t easy. I have lost my flexibility. I can no longer just go when I want. Yet my baby is changing all the time. I get used to one rhythm and think I have it all down and then he changes. I have to be flexible to move with these changes. He teaches me a new relationship to flexibility. My mother always said that her children were her teachers. When I was pregnant I used to wonder…what will this child teach me? Who will he be? Already I see a personality emerge and he is only 4 and half months old. He is such a person. The other day I was nursing him and I looked down at him, slow blinking eyes, drinking, the stray hand tapping my neck, lightly tugging my hair….and I thought … now I am certain that human beings have a soul. If I ever doubted the soul, thought that we were just ticking machines running through survival and pleasure functions, Lukas has taught me otherwise. I look at him, this small human being. He has been alive for such a brief time and yet he is so complete. He arrived in this world as a little person with a capacity for love, fear, wonder. I am simply his care giver. His guide for a brief time. I teach him the rhythms of being in a body, eating, sleeping, speaking and grasping. He reminds me of the rhythms of the soul, waiting, watching, trusting and listening. It is our soft and beautiful, necessary exchange. It is what life is about.