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Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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Occasionally something from the beginning occurs to us (that’s how far we have come already, that we remember the beginning, back then). Our baby’s first breath (we missed it in the excitement, you more than me). And then? Continuing to breathe (we too), looking at our baby. Our gaze more watery than his. We stayed awake (it was the middle of the day), our baby fell asleep. And then he slept and slept. What? For this he came into the world? To sleep? This made many things easier for us (we now see that very clearly), for we didn’t need to do anything. We couldn’t do anything (except for you: every few hours you could give him your breast). We preserved one part of the beginning for ourselves: the insight that we don’t need, and are not able, to do anything (almost anything) to promote his growth. And we also realize: that is why something happens, in fact that is the only way anything happens, when willful action does not distort it. (Our baby has awakened. Feverless. Already he has rolled over onto his belly and pushed himself up. What shall we do now?)

 

 

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Suddenly the fever is there and it is rising quickly. Our baby’s forehead and cheeks are burning. His gaze does not seek us, nor himself, it seeks nothing. He wants to lie in your arms, his head pressed firmly against your breast. Again and again his hands grope and stray into the little woolen blanket. Our apartment closes itself off. The temperature is rising. No sounds come in from outside. We are quiet and watchful. We know what has to be done (it is not much; in case of emergency we would know where to turn). We are worried, but not beyond measure. We feel fear in the background. As close as we are to each other, I don’t see fear in you nor do you see it in me. That is because we don’t turn around to see it. That is a great exercise, letting it stand back there. It goes like this: We let fear stand back there and feel it as as our background. That way we take nothing from fear, nor do we give anything to it. Thus it can operate where it is supposed to and not somewhere else. This now is a strong, isolated situation (that fear has something to do with love is something we had never considered). We arrived late at night and our baby falls asleep. He is breathing loudly. Then as quietly as we are.

 

 

 

 

 

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Pride comes easily (easiest) to us. As soon as our babies are in the world, the comparisons begin. There is no end to thinking about what is good and what is bad for the babies. What is right and what is wrong. A trap one can hardly avoid stumbling into. We think about the babies who have disappeared into childcare and already we are passing judgment (sometimes we postpone judgment, weighing this against that, but ultimately judgment is passed). That is how we are: setting up ours against the other’s (against the other ours) is for us a requirement, a compulsion, a need, a habit, a pleasure, a faith. It is difficult to silence us in this respect. Strange: in this activity (comparing and judging) we mature, our senses sharpen, our conviction becomes vigorous and strong and our arrogance disappears. Suddenly we are letting the others be the others and us be ourselves (our baby’s eyes widen with astonishment at our progress. We rock him to and fro in the bathtub, pour water over his head from a cupped hand and promise him that if he wants to found a new religion, he need not fear that we will first abandon him amid the reeds).

 

 

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The first babies have already disappeared and more and more are following them. Nursery, daycare, these are the foursquare, clumsy names of their new home (first for one or two hours, then for half a day, eventually a whole day). The babies vanish behind woven barriers, as if they had to be hidden and protected. They are gathered together into random groups to be taken care of by unknown women. They are brought and picked up. The parents drop off the babies before they have learned their lessons. Inspired by a strange faith (in doing and making and work), they feel free. They are harried by fear. The daily practice with their babies has become a burden to them. Enough! they call out. Necessity! they cry. Sure, sure, we feel the pain, but such is life! They don’t know this: the sadness of the babies will return some day. (At this point our baby admonishes us to remember the story of the wicker basket and the abandoned child. And the daughter of Pharao.)

 

 

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One more walk at dusk (the baby, I). The stroller pulls to the right (a wheel needs replacing). The sky is violet, the air is mild, windless (only the birds aren’t singing). We visit the church (the baby on my arm, the stroller stays in the forecourt). An Advent service is about to begin, you are already singing, we’re causing a disturbance (says a pair of stern eyes). We move on to the chess players, who are pondering the moves of their figures without looking to the side (floor chess). We briefly dive into the darkness of the park, only a little mouse crosses our path. On the other side of the street we visit the empty Italian open-air restaurant. Right away you want get out of the stroller and examine on your knees the colorful floor lights and put them out by covering them with your hands. In the elevator to the subway we meet again with a neighbor who is letting himself be taken underground a second time. Two boys on skateboards tear up the evening, racing down the one-way street in the wrong direction. All people are in search of community. When you are asleep, I carry you upstairs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sometimes I converse with our baby. Usually at times when we are tired together (but not so tired that our thoughts are paralyzed, on the contrary, the tiredness refreshes our thoughts). Is it true, I whisper into our baby’s soft ear, that there is not much time left for us to be together and I need to hurry up in order to find out all that needs to be learned? About you, about us? Our time seems so plentiful to me, so bounteous, so endless, and then I almost feel panicked that I could fritter away this time, not make the most of it. Yes, I think, I will overlook many things, fail to understood almost everything, allow the abundance to pass away. But how can it be that despite all my fears I enjoy every moment with you and that it seems to me that I am deriving the greatest benefit from this enjoyment? I wouldn’t like to believe that these two sides go together! Are you saying I can now see for myself that speed is worth a try?

 

 

 

 

 

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Self-knowledge is a simple matter, we think, the baby shows us everything we need to know about what and how we are. Is there anything or anyone more neutral, less prejudiced than our baby when it comes to self-knowledge (and why didn’t we think of this before)? Every day we practice self-knowing; if we didn’t want to do that, we would have to treat ourselves very badly (we would have to force ourselves to not be who we are; which is something we are actually capable of, as we have already found out). Our baby, we think, shaking our head in disbelief (he is forming sounds with his mouth, quietly, just for himself, as if we were not with him, or as if he didn’t care, or rather, as if neither our presence nor our absence had anything to do with it. And this mouth, forming sounds, is a suckling mouth. Yes, it really is so, when the mouth forms sounds it is suckling; of course, all utterance is suckling!).  

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And then our baby falls over. More quickly and straightly than a felled tree. Just a moment ago he was standing by the coffee table with a stern expression as he examined a cork coaster imprinted with the construction phases of the Eiffel Tower, bit one of its corners, knocked its edge against the table – and already he fell (we were still amazed: how he pulls himself up alongside the table and his big head rises over the horizon of the table top, how matter-of-factly and yet surprisingly he now stands upright, without straining, though wobbling a little, but unconcerned). A thump as his head hits the rug, and we feel the floor vibrate. Instantly we leap toward our fallen baby – and gaze (kneeling) into a quietly laughing face. It forces us to remember the pause just a moment ago, when our child fell over and before we leapt toward him – a pause that must have been very brief but that now, after the event, seems to have been enormously long. And this pause (was it the complete emptiness between two thoughts?) makes us as speechless as our baby’s fall and his quiet laughter about that.

 

 

 

 

 

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Now our baby is awake. He looks around attentively and without shyness. When his gaze focuses on something, or somebody, he holds that thing or person in a particular way. It doesn’t say you are this or that, him or her, it says: There, right there, there’s something. It penetrates this something, but in a completely different way from the way we do it. As if it could dissolve the things, the somebodies, in itself, or itself in the things and the somebodies. As if reality were not yet hardened. Our baby is awake, completely, and yet still awakening, on and on. Strange, we think, because his awakeness is no longer the glassy awakeness of the first weeks, that astonishing and also frightening all-encompassing awakeness that did not seem to recognize details (even you were not Somebody). Has the first awakeness given way to the second? Or has our baby awakened in the awakeness? Is awakeness the precondition for awakening? (Our baby looks at us winding about in our questions, and dissolves, disappears. Very briefly, but we swear, for a very, very brief moment, he disappeared.)