Just like J.M. Barrie, who believed that a baby’s first laugh was the origin of fairies, I believe that a baby’s first smile holds a special magic. It is a precious gift and the person the baby gives it to is very lucky. Will gave his first smile to my Aunt Linda. He was lying on the couch in my parent’s living room where we had all gathered after my brother's Farewell, and Linda came up from behind the couch and leaned over to look at him. Will was four weeks old and he had given a few practice smiles the day before, but this smile was different. He looked into her eyes and showed her his gums with that bright grin that I have come to know so well in the time since. In all honesty, I was a little jealous that my baby decided to give that precious gift to someone he had just met, but looking back I wonder if he didn’t see something familiar in her, that maybe he recognized that she had a difficult path ahead of her and wanted to give her encouragement. It was almost like he was trying to tell her something about where he had just been and where she soon would be. Of course none of us knew that she was sick or that she would only be with us another year, but even at the time I knew that something special had passed between the two of them. It was the first and last time Will was able to meet his Great Aunt in this life. I’m no longer jealous, in fact I’m grateful. I’m grateful that I got to witness that special moment that seamed one generation to the next in the eternal ebb and flow between our former lives, this life and the next.
The picture is a little bit blurry, but it was the first big bright smile that I caught on camera, so it is precious to me."
Love this little boy! Though I miss the babyness in this picture; he's still a baby but so grown up!
ReplyDeleteThat post always makes me cry!
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