Lausten I figure I’d bring this part of the discussion over here.
I hope this can be food for thought
As for your diversion into the topic of grandfather hood, you so miss the point,
and I’d rather bring that discussion over here.
It’s not about being Napa, it’s always been about my interaction with the infant, baby, child. It’s about a personal relationship and establishing understanding and avenues of communication and growing mutual trust.
I cringe at how many talk at babies, expecting them to perform, making meaningless jesters and wondering why the kid wants back to mom or dad.
Unlike many who are in a hurry and thoughtlessly force themselves on babies and children, I hold back, giving them time to assess me, be it that little two-week old infant, five years ago, or this little bright eyed 6 month old with limbs and hands and feet that are constantly moving, busy making connections and growing.
With the care giver attending the child, with an attentiveness that can take advantage of windows of opportunity that avail themselves, as life flows by. For instance she’s sort of crawled a few feet. Of course, I was holding her weight of the floor, still it was her arms & hands reaching out and grasping, then pull her arms in and propelling her forward - to was one of those amazing events. A moment I was able to repeated on the back lawn when I place her feet on mine and walk a wee bit, then allowing her to bend forward (because that’s where she wanted to go) When she touched the grass, she blew me away, grasping one hand full of grass after another she pulled herself forward, gosh two, three feet.
Of course, I made her weightless, but those arms and hands knew exactly what they needed to do. That’s not “instinct” it’s hundreds of millions of years of internal knowledge acquiring, call it instinct if one wants, but be aware it’s really your body’s biological physical understanding acquired over the eons.
This time, given my growing understanding of and comfort with appreciating the mind~physical reality divide. There’s a whole new dimension to my perception of this entire experience.
It’s not like Lil B, whom I met and started helping care for regularly at 2 weeks old, Lil Miss G is a half year old. Still, previous to visiting she’d had her first tastes of food, now over the past 8 weekdays as I’ve cared for her, she’s grown past those early funny reactions to baby foods, and starting to getting it. Also her first tooth broke through, and it hasn’t been traumatic, just very droolie, which is okay, plenty of clothing she will be out growing in a hurry. She’s starting with sitting by herself, can pull herself up like a champ, legs lifting her body over and over and on and on, and I digress.
Given my perspective, this time around it’s no longer a hippy-dippy-sensing, it’s an explicit understanding - this little body contains hundreds of millions of years worth of evolutionary heritage &* knowledge. It’s her little body that knows what it needs to do next.
It’s her care givers that are teaching her about her life and what she needs to know and who will help her form her understanding and develop her thoughts, as her mind grows a bit more every single two hours she’s up, before her biology needs to recharges - though that will change soon enough.
I mean, want something spiritual to meditate on, way more mind-blowing than the blood of christ. Your blood has been handed down through baby after baby for hundreds of millions of years, yet not one single gap, or you wouldn’t be here.
You are who you are because of your blood line. Your biology is what provide the feeling of being you. But no-one can learn that trapped within your thoughts and not truly grasping what physical reality is. It’s not, you think therefore you are, it’s your biological body exists therefore you are
It’s pretty straight forward, but it requires a more sober appreciation of our mind and its imaginative wonders.
And it compels us to reckon with the biological creature who creates the mind you possess along with your sense of being the thing in itself.