The “Big Pink” Baby

The couple downstairs brought their new baby girl home a few weeks ago. With Ter and me living directly above her, we’ve expected to be “up with the baby” of a night since she got out of the hospital. Despite her parents’ apologies for the screaming, however, we have yet to hear anything more than occasional cooing and, even more infrequently, a little fussing. I reckon once she gets some power behind her lungs, we’ll hear her more often and that’s okay. It’s what babies do, and when she gets rolling, I hope I’ll feel more for the new parents than myself. Children were not in my cards on this go-round, so I’ve been spared the anxiety attached to being responsible for a newborn, an anxiety which our sleep-deprived neighbours have admitted to feeling as they set out on this journey—without a map, may I add.

I do wonder why babies cry, though. I mean, really. What do they have to cry about? I get the wet diaper discomfort and I imagine the warm squishy didie isn’t much fun, either. I understand being First World hungry and the startling sharpness of intestinal gas pains; I also get the too-hot, too-cold dilemma, especially when you don’t control the thermostat and lack the motor skills to manage your own sweater, but other than those trifling irritants, there’s no reason for spontaneous squalling—right?

Well …

Something occurred to me while revisiting The Tale of the Body Thief—the story where Lestat de Lioncourt, after two hundred years, decides he’s done with being a vampire and wants to be mortal again. Enter a man with the ability to force a soul from its flesh and take that body as his own. He convinces Lestat to switch bodies with him and Lestat recklessly agrees to try it for a day. Naturally, the Body Thief absconds with Lestat’s immortal body and the chase begins as the ousted vampire sets out to regain his perfected form. There’s other stuff woven through the tale—love and redemption and salvation and reconciliation etc.—but Lestat’s memories prove to be grossly over-romanticized when he opens his mortal eyes and cannot figure out why the light is so dim. The weight of his mortal flesh is overwhelming, the body is clumsy and sluggish, the senses are muzzy and indistinct, and then, oh joy, he catches a wicked savage cold and ends up in the hospital. In due course, he grows accustomed to his cumbersome state, but as I read his story, it dawned on me that his plight was not unlike what our souls must face when we are born into the human experience.

Imagine coming from a place of weightlessness, where the light is luminous and never truly dark, where we can transport ourselves on the strength of a whim, and landing in a dimension where gravity keeps us grounded, where sight and sound are murky and lack resonance, where we must learn to express ourselves with speech rather than a telepathic flash of imagery. Imagine being part of a great collective consciousness, of sharing thoughts and dreams and visions with ease, of belonging to something bigger and more powerful than oneself, then being disconnected, singled out and alone.

I cannot say for certain that our combined essence actually exists on such a plane, but I’m pretty darned sure it’s vastly different from what we know as carbon-based life forms assigned to this intensely physical phase. Being mortal is damned difficult work; it’s lonely, exhausting, and painful, and I’m fortunate that I don’t remember where I came from, otherwise I might have quit a long time ago. Never mind that I chose this estate, that I clamoured to come here and learn something from the struggle. I asked for this. I wanted to be mortal, to experience Contrast in the best way possible, which was to squeeze myself into this bag of meat and bone and go forth with good intention … and no idea how hard it would be. Yes, there is joy in this state. There is love and pleasure and music and the flavour of chocolate, but these things are gained as you go.

It surely must be worse for babies and small children, so fresh from the shell and yet tied to the go-before. Who wouldn’t be dismayed about unforeseen constriction of the flesh, not to mention the isolation that comes with it? We are all human, yet the physical condition cuts us off from our fellows unless we make the effort to reconnect, not as we connect in our soul state, but through social contact and mutual cooperation. Babies don’t speak our language and we’ve lost our ability to communicate without words. How frustrating and how scary it is to find oneself in a world so foreign when all the brochures promised a great adventure.

Maybe that’s why babies cry. When the “Big Pink” baby ramps up the volume and I happen to be nearby, I might just ask her—or maybe I’ll just cuddle her, and assure her that though she may feel otherwise, she is not alone.