to sit mutely in the wonder

Heave, heave, heave goes his belly as he breathes, moving like the tall stark trees outside our panoramic hospital window. In the middle of winter, they are still, yet if you look closely, they are moving slightly at the tip top.

My second son was born yesterday. And I have awoken from a dream. Many dreams actually. Some known. Others like a pleasant fog.

As I hold his tiny body, there is utter quiet in the air around me and total stillness within. It’s one of the few times in the last while where I have entered what feels like true silence. But perhaps it is more apt to describe it not as me entering silence, but as me being silenced. For I haven’t tried to do any quieting of the noisy life I live in. I haven’t retreated or stilled myself through meditation. It is this person—this baby—who has done the silencing. He has stilled the air. Ushered in the quiet. And it is a strange beauty to me that all I have to do in response is to sit mutely in the wonder.