Five and a half pounds

Some things in life that change you immensely come about completely unexpected. They hit you before you see them coming and even afterwards you aren't quite sure what happened. Things like realizing you are in love, someone close to you dying or even car accidents. They are all things we know exist and should even expect in life but never really anticipate. They always seem to come at times we are least looking for them. Life always tends to hit us below the waist when we're not expecting it to.

Recently I have added another thing on this list. Babies. No I didn't have any babies...but someone very close to me did, my brother and sister-in-law, as a matter of fact they had twins...identical. I was the type of person who never "got" babies. I didn't understand why everyone thought they were cute or 'precious'. They always seemed to be sloppy messes that were no fun. You have to change them, burp them, feed them, entertain them etc...it just sounded like too much work for me. I would even say that I didn't want kids at one point. Besides the fact that they are a ton of work, the responsibility involved with raising another human being seemed too much to bear for me. You could do everything right as a parent and your child could still end up being a nutcase axe murderer, that wasn't a comforting thought for me. Not to mention the world I would subject a new child to. Sometimes I'm not sure if I want to live in this world, let alone bring another life into it. Babies...blah!

Yes I do have a heart...somewhere. And no I'm not a baby hater, this is a story of change remember. I think God did a good job with baby planning. She (meaning God and since were talking about babies I figure I'll go with the female label) gave us 9+ months to prepare for this huge change in our lives. You have to figure, it's God...She could just made it so the babies popped out right after the sperm hit the egg. Boy, that would of been crazy. Spring break would never be the same, girls and guys would have to get a bunch of extra tickets to fly home with their new bundles of joy from Cancun. Anyways back to the story...Unfortunately for me, I didn't use my grace period of 9 months well. I pushed the thought of uncle Drew out of my head and didn't want to comprehend the change that would occur in our families, especially since babies tend to be ripple effects. First a brother then a cousin then a freind and so on until everyone you know has a kid except you...kind of like weddings.

However, I still remember the moment I layed eyes on Nate and Noah when I went to the hospital to visit them for the first time. It was an odd feeling. One, like I said earlier, that hit me so unexpectedly yet so naturally. I suppose the best way to describe it is to say if felt like 'life'. I felt, for the first time, that I was holding all of what life was meant to be in my arms, weighing in at only 5 and a half pounds. Suddenly the world stopped turning and everything turned into a dream state. You know what I'm talking about if you've ever been in love or in a car accident, reality and dream become hard to distinguish between. So I sat there holding 5 and a half pounds of life changing baby in my arms just trying to soak in the moment and completely let myself feel the small eyes penetrate my hard cold heart. I never realized how cold my heart has become until my nephew looked into it. It's hard to understand how something so small could break through a wall that I have been building for 23 years from the pain of life just trying to keep out enough reality to hold onto my sanity. In my macho man state I just stared back trying my best not to cry, not that I had much of a choice the eyes were like tractor beams. Maybe it was because looking into the eyes of a newborn is about the closest we will ever get to looking at pure innocence, love and fearlessness. I have worked hard at becoming a "man" but as I stared into those innocent eyes I realized my life was full of escapism, fear and hate, everything I didn't want to be. I saw myself more clearly in the eyes of this small child than in any mirror.

I'm not really the type of person who misses people, even close people. There are instances but on the whole I don't usually have deep longings to see people I know all that much. However, somehow these tiny babies who can't even hold their own heads up, let alone talk, have reached deep into my soul and aren't letting go. If anything, the hold is getting tighter and tighter. So about 3 months have passed now and I am now beggining to "get" babies. I tend to be a slow learner with the concrete in life, as opposed to the abstract. It really is amazing when the beauty of life hits you. You remember why you are still alive.