Old friends and new. (Emily, Amber and I)
Besides all the reasons listed below, a baby shower is another lovely addition to pregnancy. I guess my head has been wrapped around simplicity. (Spinning on a million things and pretending that I am trying to keep it simple. Hah! Sometimes my staunch instance on a lack of needs is really an escapist's digression from giving, I now finally begin to realize. If that makes sense. If it doesn't, I simply quote St. Francis of Assisi- "For it is in giving that we receive," and likewise, if I dare, it is in receiving that we give the opportunity for others to be Givers, and work towards a loving and interdependent community, empowering ourselves by empowering others, rather than hiding away in a supposedly self-sufficient self-reliance of modern Americanism.)
That tangent stated, I add, 'Kinatakiwa kijiji kimoja kulea mtoto.' It takes a village to raise a child. That is the quote we made into a bookmark and gave out to those who attended the shower. (Deciding not to use the swahili proverb suggested by Tino-'If a child asks for a razor blade, give it to him.')
Neighbors attended, old family friends, family friends I hadn't met yet, friends from Peace Corps, friends from high school, friends from college that I didn't meet until a couple of months ago, siblings, parents, nieces, nephews, and everyone giving lots of love, wisdom, and cute little fuzzy gifts. The biggest expense at my feet so far for the baby (if all goes well with health and insurance) is a diapering system. Instead of bringing presents, the shower invitation requested donations to my cloth diaper system. I have wanted to go cloth since always and was barely considering doing anything else... until I started all the research! There are just too many options to choose from, and too many expensive diapers. I stuck with it though and finally put together a report on what it was that I felt I needed to have a diapering system that will last about 6 months and brought it to the shower. Let me stress that no one had seen this request list and total, which came to needing $287.55 . I opened gifts and set cards aside for crying over later (I cry too easily, and I did cry all over again reading messages inside the cards, and poems written, etc.) Inside many of the cards was a generous donation to the diapers. At the end of it all, I counted up Elias's cash, and low and behold, I held $280.00!
Again, let me reiterate these thoughts that I have often, if I haven't said them before, let me say them again and again. Babies are miracles, and babies beget miracles.
Enormous thanks to everyone who was there, everyone who wanted to be there, and everyone who is reading this who is somehow or other a part of the greater village that will become a part of the child is to become a part of this world.
In the words of Walt Whitman, read to me by my brother and abbreviated here:
"There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became.
And that object became a part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, or for many years of stretching cycles of years.
(From the) early lilacs (to the) quarrelsome boys.
(From) his own parents,
he that had father'd him and she that had conceiv'ed him in her womb and birth'd him, (to the) men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks what are they? ...
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes and will always go forth every day."
To my son Elias, may the planet be his classroom and the world be his village.
