Watermelons and Wombs

A little more than one year ago, I watched as a baby boy was brought into the world. Amid the bustling of midwives, the dimly lit room, and the groans of mother-to-be, a new human entered what we call home. His delicate lungs, which were filled with fluid for nine months, must suddenly learn to exchange Oxygen for Carbon Dioxide. And within minutes his body naturally begins absorbing the cloudy lung fluid into his blood stream, allowing the first breath of cold air to pierce his insides and all this for no other reason than it was created to do so. The tiny heart which once produced slow, consistent and rythmic beats must now brurst into action as it desperately attempts to pump this oxygen throughout the body. And what follows is possibly one of the most memorable of moments: the first cry. Many say it is the natural consequence of the traumatic process of birth (as a child, someone once told me giving birth is like trying to squeeze a watermelon through something the size of a lemon and the mental image has never left me) but I prefer to think of this noisy entrance as a declaration of life, the announcement of being. And although I have never experienced this personally, I suppose it to be the most majestical and enthralling sound a mother may ever hear.

And now he is one-year-old and walking, and babbling, and watching, and questioning, and attempting to figure out this big place.

And isn't this all ridiculous? Isn't this taking it a little too far? With the whole beginning-as-two-gametes-then-coming-into-the-world-as-a-watermelon-built-of-billions-of-cells thing? And thank God that we don't acutally come from oversized birds, wrapped up like some frozen burrito ready for the microwave. And thank God that we don't simply "pop" into existance like some fairy-tale creature or that our cells don't all choose to become one large spleen or kidney but somehow know exactly what they need to be without communicating with the others. And thank GOD for button noses and play-doh toes and doll-like finger nails. Thank God. For He is intricately creative and infinitely surprising.

La Loba

This is Leo.