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Big Baby

Writer's picture: EmilyEmily

The highway is full of big cars

going nowhere fast

And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn

Some people wrap their lives around a cocktail glass

And you sit wondering

where you’re going to turn.

I got it.

Come. And be my baby.


Maya Angelou, from Come. And Be My Baby


Welcome, dear reader –


I have a game I play in waiting rooms and public transportation.


I look at all the people around me -- the wiry man hunched over his book, the middle aged woman rummaging in her purse, the older gentleman in his windbreaker, the students with their backpacks, the faces that seem content or bored, sad or angry – and I imagine each person as a baby, as their infant self.


And then I imagine each of these baby-people, these big babies, held, embraced, loved.


Each person around me, small, mewling, defenseless. Truly without defenses or dogma or ideologies. Stripped of all the armor accumulated over the years. Vulnerable and not ashamed.


There they are – there you are – dependent upon someone else’s care, not knowing what will happen, just being in the world. All of us connected by our infant past.

***

In that envisioned infant state, our needs exist without judgment. They simply are. You or I – we are hungry or cold or lonely or tired.


And in Maya Angelou’s poem, all the fastness of the world – cars, drink, smoke – cannot compare to being acknowledged, held, seen. Come. Be my baby. There is such a rightness when our needs are met, fully, without judgment, without shame.


I want to take back the pejorative language of a being a baby, once we’re no longer infants. In fact, I want to be a Big Baby. To acknowledge the needs of myself and others without judgment. To care for myself and others with an expanse of love and commitment. To be present with others, aware of our connection of needs.


In newness,

Emily


*I do a similar envisioning with children, in which I imagine their adult faces, reminding myself of their agency and power.


**I know not every person is fortunate enough to have been loved and care for as an infant, but in this envisioning, they are.

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All original artwork  created and owned by Emily Miller Mlčák.

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