The next day, whenever she wasn’t drinking her bottle
or napping, she was screaming… It seems to me that she would have
stopped crying if I would have picked her up, bounced her around and
found ways to distract her. But instead I observed her
intently and spoke to her every once in a while.
Paula
leaned over the divider and said, “Don’t just ignore her! DO SOMETHING!
Put a pacifier in her mouth or something!”
Well…fortunately for
me and Sarah, Paula had too much pacifying to do with her own babies
so she had to get back to her running around and couldn’t really spend
too much time imparting us with her wisdom.
The third day she
screamed again…
The fourth day she screamed half the day and
then….
She stopped… She sniveled a bit… took some trembling breaths…
And
then…
She looked around the room for the first time as if she
was feeling it…
I said, “Wow. You are looking around the
room.” She looked into my eyes and when she made eye contact
with me she seemed to get startled.
She started screaming again.
I am not sure what she must have been thinking. Maybe
she was startled because it was the first time that she had ever really looked
at someone. Or maybe when she saw me, she thought she was supposed
to scream until she was entertained, who knows… but the fact
was….
She saw me…
“It looks like you got startled and
now you are crying again.”
After a few minutes she stopped screaming. This time she carefully and slowly looked around the room. I
noticed her watching some babies playing and said, ‘Yeah, those babies
are playing.”
She heard my voice and looked into my eyes again. This time she didn’t cry. She looked at me with an inquisitive look as if she was re-evaluating some thoughts…
We looked into
each other’s eyes for quite a while. Then, after a while, she
used one of her formerly useless limbs to reach up and touch my face.
I
watched carefully trying to understand what it must feel like to be
her at that moment. I said gently, “Oooooh, you want to touch
my face. You are using your arm and your hand.”
She then
noticed her hand and started looking at her fingers. She seemed captivated. She was amazed at how she could move this interesting shape around.
I am also still amazed by that.
How do we move around? What a truly incredible thing.
I had fun sharing with her in
that amazement.
Over the course of the next day, she explored
her self and her surroundings. She half-heartedly cried every
once in a while. It was as if she had an old habit and just
wasn’t ready to completely give it up.
By the next week she seemed very excited with the concept of exploration. She spent most of everyday peacefully looking around and becoming more aware of her self and how she was part of her environment.
When she appeared
to be feeling safe and was playing on her own, I moved back to my
place in the center of the room.
As the weeks went on Sarah was
happy most of the time and she would, only scream when she had to
pass through her former room or when she saw Paula.
So now I
had seven babies playing on the floor and Paula had five. Paula’s
babies were still screaming and crying most of the time, and she was
still running around frustrated.
She came up to the center
divider again shaking angrily and said, “It’s not fair. YOU
aren’t DOING anything! It must be your room. Your room has more
light then mine.”
I said to her, “Do you want to switch rooms. I will be happy to switch rooms with you if you like.”
She huffed
under her breath, “No, that’s alright.”
Later that month I invited
Paula to bring over another baby. She brought
So now I had eight babies and she had four. She
was still running around frustrated and upset. She was still complaining
that it wasn’t fair that the babies in my room were happy when I wasn’t
DOING anything….
Not doing but instead… being…
Being observant…
Being
accepting…
Being present…
“Do nothing,
Yet leave nothing
undone
A foolish man is always doing,
Yet much remains to
be done.”
I would have been content to sit with the
babies forever… but so it turns out I would soon be on another adventure…
Still… with the same theme…
Chinese Medicine and the Tao
