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Beautiful baby, delighting us by his little toe (with its involuntary movement) as he does by the sight of his neck (which we suspect is the original home of innocence), by his smooth shoulders and the fatty fold at their center (which indicates infinity to us), by his soft buttocks (which we read as proof that life included comfort in its repertoire from the beginning), by his brow, into which not a single hair falls (it is high and broad), by his full-lipped mouth (which gleams, though it does not speak yet), by the dimples in the back of his hands (in which we practice stumbling every day) – nothing can stop our delight over a beauty, mysteriously unrelated to our adult beauty, mysteriously gapless and indestructible.

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Then our baby and I end up in the midst of books (the baby reaches for one, tries to pull it out, but it’s jammed tight between other volumes, while I randomly leaf around in many books), and suddenly the book strikes us (yes, both of us, we agree on this) as a grotesque act of human pretense, confusion, and empty hope. But a life without books is impossible, we sigh (both of us letting out the same regretful sigh), but there are worse things. Once again without books, on a park bench (with just a wind leafing through the trees), our baby’s fist releases a piece of paper, the corner of a page from a book, secretly torn off. Unread (we’re both a little sorry about that), it drops to the ground and the wind sweeps it away with other leaves.

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And later, I think, life oscillates between the tremendous (quiet) longing to forget who one is and the other (loud) longing of wanting to know by all means who one is, and this pendulum never comes to rest, which brings us consolation and despair in equal measure. But the life of our baby (with a cap set on his head to protect against the slanting light of the sun, which makes him look both clueless and audacious) does not seem to oscillate. He wants neither to know who he is nor to forget who he is. He is the baby, after all, completely and entirely the baby, but to himself he is not the baby, to himself he is – and here we fall silent.

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The baby grasps sand and is not surprised that there is nothing to hold on to (just a few grains are left clinging between his fingers). A hot late-summer day. The surface of the lake is motionless. From the other shore, the sound of a harmonica. Three geese are standing on the meadow, take a step, stand again. A few carp swim along the edge of the shore. A woman, swimming, divides the lake into two halves. High in the sky, an airplane, motionless, made of translucent silver. The wheels of a bicyclist grind on the pebbly lakeside path. The baby grasps sand and is not surprised. A wind rises and casts a handful of stiff leaves onto the water. They sail along. Everything is particular: all creatures and all things. (The baby, I – weless.) A simple day.

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It is a strangely suspended existence, this life with the baby. His becoming is so acute and sustained that it makes our experience uncertain. Should we take this (this look, this raising of a hand, this fast heartbeat) or that (that look, that raising of a hand, that fast heartbeat) at face value? We experience a baby, OK. We experience our baby, OK. That is the full extent of our knowledge. A baby? The word itself toddles off with shrug. Baby, baby, baby, we say aloud with various intonations, until our baby looks up. A look we cannot interpret. But have we ever felt safer under anyone’s gaze?

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And again our baby drinks (of you. Astonishment at the mutual devotion, which looks as if you are giving and the baby is receiving. But the longer I look, the more this first impression vanishes. As often in deep contemplation, borders and classifications lose their definition. Unity comes to the fore, resolves differences, to the point of reversing them. Then everything gets blurred again and in a neighbor’s apartment someone is practicing a Bach prelude, the sounds softly and effortlessly penetrate the walls, a peculiarly serious cajolery, and soon I myself am the one being nursed, the nursed one I have always been.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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No pointless movement, no superfluous gesture, no uncertain look – it is beautiful to see the unspoiled manner in which the baby seeks contact (and how easily he finds it for that reason). Nothing needs to be veiled, covered, hidden, he not only has no cause for deception, he is simply incapable of it. It is as if he belonged to a different species, we call them the intact. That is how we want to be (again): intact. Before language, it seems to us, all humans are intact. The spoiling comes with language (frankly, we like to spoil things, we take pleasure in it). Shall we make a resolution to this end: Not a word too many or too few? (When we ask our baby about it, he seems to dismiss the idea. And then his gaze begs us to talk on and on and keep talking.)

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So a kind of egoism takes hold of us that is not at all reprehensible and that in no way diminishes our pleasure (joy, happiness, contentment) in being with the baby. It is a kind of egoism we never knew before. As if we could only be and feel like a part of creation when we give ourselves over to that. To be an active part of creation – this is not thinkable (thought immediately turns it into a story mixed of morality, responsibility, and culture.) But we are that and are very surprised ourselves at this wondrous insight that has accrued to us only now with the uninhibited discovery of our egoism. (And our baby? Leaning on my thighs, pudgy-cheeked with a double chin that renders the neck invisible, the gaze turned sideways: a nonplused official.)

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Unexpectedly we run into to the thought that we don’t wish to share our happiness with anyone. We (the baby, you, I) form a kind of cell (fruit of very recent fertilization), which in its uniqueness has committed itself to a kind of stasis. The strange wish not to want to share (and thereby divide) ourselves is inscribed in it. Thus our fortune resembles a (surprisingly robust) soap bubble that permits itself to be wafted through the day: its smoothly tensioned skin may reflect everything that comes its way, but nothing is likely to penetrate the bubble. Only another (obvious) thought makes it burst: Being the baby (in happiness) is sharing.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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What are we seeing, we ask ourselves, what are we picking up? We are witnesses of a transformation that seems to be taking place in a soundless (inaccessible) room, a room beyond the silence we are familiar with, and also beyond the noise we are familiar with. There under the heat lamp lies our baby, delightfully naked, padded and rounded by fat, where just a moment ago this delicate (did he not strike us as nearly transparent?) newborn lay, with big hands and feet and that unrelenting seriousness in his face. Now his chubbiness presents our eyes with much greater resistance, his flesh with its enlivening fragrance makes him inscrutable; where just a moment ago we were reverent, now we are provoked by amusement. But we’ll cope with that (we are amazing).