I hold my newborn daughter in my arms. All the noise and effort of labor fades away. We’re alone in the quiet and the soft light. I gaze into her eyes, which are such a deep navy blue that they seem almost black. Looking into them is like looking through windows into time itself: “like looking into eternity,” says my midwife. I feel pulled by those eyes, those dark windows, to a place I know I’ve been before. I have no conscious memory of the place, but in some deeper way than memory, I recognize where I am.
I’m in my mother’s arms and my mother is looking into my eyes. I search her face for my name, my future. Her gaze tells me: Your name is Beloved, your future is Life. Whenever I look up, she’s there. Whenever I gaze at her, she gazes back. Her eyes say: “You are my world.” I know from this that she is my world.
My tiny daughter stares and stares at me, as if she’s memorizing my face. I speak quietly to her and she listens intently. Perhaps she’s connecting my face with the voice she’s heard in the distance all these months. For now, I’m just a jumble of sensations to her. I’m Arms, Breasts, Face, Voice. It will be my job to give meaning to those sensations, to turn my arms into Shelter and my breasts into Nurturance, to make my face become Relationship, my voice Compassion. It will be my daughter’s job to bring these parts together into a whole called Mother, and through me, to know trust, pleasure, love, and someday, to know herself.
My mother is like a mirror. When I look into her face, she reflects my own self back to me. And always that self is known, loved. I believe she will never look away.
My infant daughter seems to hold some special ancient knowledge in her dark baby eyes. If she could speak, I believe she would explain my life to me — where I’ve come from and where I’m going, what to hold on to and what to let go of. I continue gazing into the mirror of her face, hoping to find myself, hoping to understand what caused my own mother to look away, what caused the mirror in her eyes to cloud over, and hoping that I will always be able to meet my daughter’s gaze.
What an eloquent and profound sketch of mother-and-newborn connection:
“I search her face for my name, my future. Her gaze tells me: Your name is Beloved, your future is Life. Whenever I look up, she’s there. Whenever I gaze at her, she gazes back. Her eyes say: “You are my world.” I know from this that she is my world.”
Thank you, Gina. That connection between mother and newborn is the strongest I have ever experienced.