What caring for newborn twins taught me about helplessness, dependence, and the love that held us before memory.
There is one thing caring for newborn twins has made unmistakably clear to me:
Every human being enters this world utterly helpless.
Somewhere along the way, I became accustomed to earning my own money, making my own decisions, and moving through life as though I were entirely self-sufficient. My sense of self grew larger with age. And before I knew it, I had become the kind of adult who could almost believe that I had never once been helpless. As though I had always known how to take care of myself. As though I could live perfectly well without anyone else.
What an enormous illusion. I was once exactly like these babies.
If no one fed me, I would have gone hungry.
If no one changed me, my skin would have become sore.
If no one washed me, I would have remained dirty.
If no one held me, I would never have learned what trust or love felt like.
I was that fragile.
That dependent.
That completely unable to care for myself.
And perhaps the more uncomfortable truth is that, in some essential way, I still am. I have made it this far without starving. Without being left unattended long enough for my wounds to fester. And despite all the disappointing things I have seen in the world and in people, I am still somehow capable of trusting. Still capable of loving.
That is not simply because I grew into a particularly strong or capable person. It is because, long before I could remember any of it, someone was caring for me the way I now care for my children.
Someone fed me before I knew how to ask.
Someone cleaned me before I knew how to be ashamed of being dirty.
Someone picked me up when I cried.
Someone kept me alive through all the hours I no longer remember.
There is no such thing as a life lived entirely alone. Not as long as we are alive. We survive because, at one point or another, someone carries what we cannot carry for ourselves.
Having a child does not open an entirely new dimension of love. Nor does it introduce us to a completely new kind of love. Maybe it does something quieter than that.
It teaches us to remember a love we had forgotten.
To trace backward a love given to us before memory.
To rehearse, once again, the love from a time we can no longer remember—but without which we would never have become the people we are now.
