What My Two Week Old Grandson Has Taught Me!

What My Two Week Old Grandson Has Taught Me!

My beautiful, awesome, amazing grandson is two weeks old today. I say all these truly meaningful things about Rio because I believe them from the bottom of my heart. I am discovering more and more each day that being a grandparent is something extraordinary and mysterious. I am also discovering that with Rio, life as it once was known has changed forever. 

Now remember, I am sharing this from the perspective of a grandparent, so I do not even need to address things like feeding, up at night, diapers, you know, the day to day things Mom and Dad are taking care of for Rio. What I am talking about is that no matter what, this truly precious gift is on my mind constantly, and that is a great thing!

But I am discovering something about this constant thinking of Rio. What I am discovering is the “teacher” within is showing me that time has an entirely new and fascinating perspective. When a newborn enters the world, what must be adapted to are the natural rhythms and cadences of the baby’s every needs. Of course this is known, but to step back and watch this all unfold puts life, my own life in an entirely new and refreshing perspective. 

I’m reading The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. She tells the story of a little boy she meets in a classroom as she is leading a poetry workshop. The little boy, not the “shining star” of the classroom, according to the teacher (another issue to address), writes an epic poem describing the love he misses from his departed Dad. The little boy wrote, “But the most I remember/is his love,/as big as Texas/when I was born.”

When I read this I felt such a surge of love for my dear Rio. But something else struck me even more mightily. All Rio and I have to do is make eye contact and I feel Rio’s pulsating love for me. Sure I talk to Rio and tell him how much I love him, and of course right now he does not talk back. But I can tell you he knows and feels my love, and I most certainly know and feel his love in return. 

Monday through Friday I literally have contact with hundreds of people. I see them, they see me, and the only interaction for the most part is a wave. No words spoken, and yet I feel such a relationship to all these beautiful people who smile back at me with a return wave. I am still trying to process this all, but what I do know is that life is best grounded with mutual understanding and respect that fosters genuine, accepting relationships.

John Keats wrote, “negative capability… [is being] capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Just as the hundreds of people I have contact with affirm this apparent truth, so does my Rio in the beauty of just being in the moment. 

The birth of Rio and the simple wave back and forth between myself and so many people brings some balance and understanding to a world in which Norris writes there are, “…no set of rules…but only the messy process of life to be lived.” I really do not believe Norris intended to sound overdramatic with this statement. Why? She concludes her story of this little boy with this thought.

“The boy who wrote about his absent father had a story to tell. His heart was in exile, and the catalyst of poetry helped it come home. And what of the catalyst of faith? Drawing both from our reason and our capacity for negative capability, faith might help us see that our most valuable experiences are always those which leave us, as the sculptor and critic Edward Robinson has said, with “an unaccountable remainder… 2 plus 2 equals 5 experiences” that remind us that our relationships with each other and the world are more mysterious than we care to admit. In the universe God made, the real world we call home, love is bigger than Texas, and even death itself, and 2 plus 2 might be 0, 11, or even 4.”

Happy two week old birthday Rio! I await all the lessons you will teach me! I love so much!