Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Of Some Thoughts on Children

I am repeatedly amazed that sex and children are so inextricably linked. Personally, I am at a loss to decide which of these I desire more, and it seems wholly gratuitous that the two are a package deal (albeit presently withheld from me). Certainly my perception of their respective pleasures is naive, overlooking the pain, labor, and responsibility of each, and yet it seems undeniable that in making one the prerequisite of the other God has surely dropped the ball, let slip the mask, and shown himself for the hedonist he is. Sexual reproduction: it's like God forgot that you can't eat your cake and have it.

At Dave and Alisha's wedding reception I was able to hold Israel Cummings long enough to rock him to sleep, despite his protestation. Permit me to wax sentimental. There is something so wholly real, and wholly impossible, about rocking an infant to sleep, that for that brief period it was to me the one sole function of the universe; the telos of reality itself. For forty or so minutes I was in the warm belly of the world, the umbilicus mundi, the cosmological core, and the motions and undulations of the party round about were simply emanations of that central reality. In all honesty I cannot call up from memory an image of the child I carried (newborns are generic to those not yet parents), but rather a physical recollection of hard and soft places, a map of texture and form: the warm lump of a head under my chin, the coolness of awkward limbs, the uncertain strainings of a tiny homunculus. In that moment I knew what it was I lived for.

"And I saw visions of God," writes Ezekiel.

posted by Jeremy at 12:26 AM

1 Marginalia:

I love your post on the pleasure of holding/rocking a child to sleep. It is one of the greatest pleasures in the world and you expressed it very well. Euripides said, "Oh, young thing, your mother's lovely armful, how sweet the fragrance of your body." Breastfeeding them is even more wonderful. I always marveled at how great a gift motherhood is. I almost felt guilty at times that I was enjoying my babies so much. I had eight of my own. I'm Josh Stevenson's mom.

By  Anonymous, at 4:30 PM  

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