Every little bit of him

Abe (my 15-year-old) and I have been doing something fun lately when we drive together: he plays me a song that he likes—he has varied tastes, so it could be Muse, or Imagine Dragons, or Beck, or Lemon Twigs, or Fitz and the Tantrums—and then I play him whatever song it reminds me of: maybe something by Fleetwood Mac, or Yes, or Boston, or Jethro Tull. It turns out I know a surprising amount of Classic Rock (surprising to me, I mean—it seems like I would have forgotten, but it comes back to me when I hear these new songs!) and, amazingly, I have yet to hear a single one of "Abe's" songs that doesn't remind me of one of "my" songs in some way or another!

[The really fun thing is how much, without my having really guided his music choices (besides playing classical music for him since he was a baby, which probably counts for something), our tastes overlap! We both find great satisfaction in introducing a previously-unknown song that the other one ends up really liking, but I also love it when he says, "okay, see if you like THIS—" and it turns out to be Journey, or Ben Folds Five, or Collective Soul, or something else I already know and like. A song by Rush started playing the other day, and Sam and I and Abe all said, "I love this song!" at the same time, which seemed like just the best thing ever.]

Anyway, having dipped a toe into the current musical waters, I've been surprised how much music repeats and recycles. I don't listen to the radio and the only reason I can even name any of those newer groups is that my kids tell me about them—but here they have been going along all these years, each in their turn, revisiting the old ground again and again: themes, melodies, basslines, lyrics. Admittedly, as I said, Abe's tastes and mine are similar so there's probably some selection bias. But still, the fact that nearly every new song I hear comes with an easily-thought-of older counterpart is a pretty impressive testament to the lack of true "originality" in the music world.

It's been kind of fun to find it in music, but in other areas, I often feel paralyzed by the inevitability of repetition! No matter how I wish to say something new (and somehow new=worthwhile in my mind), I can't!

And even though I've always known that this happens with writing (I remember Leslie Norris talking about how all literature falls into one of the Seven Great Themes) I still have to fight the urge to edit myself right into silence because everything I want to say has already been said by someone else. (Or because I, myself have already said it! Ha ha. It's funny in this context that I'm quoting one of my own previous blog posts on this same subject.) I have to remind myself that originality is not really the ultimate goal! There's a statement about that by C.S. Lewis:

The basis of all critical theory [is] the maxim that an author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom.

I like that. I do better with writing if I can concede right at the outset that I'm not saying anything new, and then just focus instead on trying to reflect, or show in a different light, something beautiful or true that I've learned or seen. G.K Chesterton's take on it is good too:

Dickens showed himself to be an original man by always accepting old and established topics. There is no clearer sign of the absence of originality among modern poets than their disposition to find new themes.

It makes sense. Rather than wasting effort on trying to be novel, I should embrace familiar themes and search for the value that can emerge when I take another look at what I think I already know. (It's the same with religious topics: each new attempt to study faith, for example, can yield helpful insight.)

That was a much longer introduction than I intended, but now we finally come to what I really wanted to talk about. Because part of this search for "originality" is, I think, an urge to be special, a feeling that "I am one-of-a-kind and important because there is no one else just like me." And of course on one level (molecular?) that is quite true. But as I get older I find it…less true. I've had to concede again and again that yes, there is someone feeling the same thing I thought I was so alone in feeling; or yes, here I am doing the same things I previously looked down on others for doing. I feel more keenly, recently, how I'm just such a regular part of humanity. Just as biased. Just as blind. Just as vulnerable. Not set apart, as I might occasionally have thought myself. And in fact, we all seem to be much more unoriginal than we might like to suppose. History (as the saying goes—clichéd but in this context that's the POINT—) repeats itself, and humans seem to remain much as they have ever been.

So I've wondered, what does that mean for me? Does what I say and think and discover really even matter, if it's all been done before? And how could humans, so predictable and repetitive— how could I—ever be interesting and important, as myself, to God? Maybe those universal themes we're all trying to express, all these questions we keep returning to in our music and our poetry and our art, are all really just different ways of saying, Do we matter? And, To whom do we matter? And, How do we get back home?

I've been thinking about this paradox for awhile now, but I've had a new (to me, ha ha) thought about it in the last several weeks. I've been taking pictures of sweet baby Ezekiel. SO many pictures. I just love every little bit of him! His toes. The bottom of his ribcage. His wrinkly back. His one flat ear and his one cupped ear. And when I'm not taking pictures, I'm looking at him, feeling him, memorizing his hands and his lips and his uneven breath.

You'd think it would get boring, watching the same stages go by over and over again. Sam and I are on the eighth round of it. The eighth time I've watched tiny eyelashes emerge. The eighth time I've wondered when the first smile would come. The eighth time I've practiced the art of easing a tiny head and neck carefully, so carefully, down into the bassinet, holding my breath that a sudden move or sound won't startle the baby into wakefulness. But what I'm finding is that the predictability makes it all more dear to me, not less! I know what's coming next and I'm free to delight in all the little details that swept by me in the chaos, the first few times.

And, oh, how I DO delight in them! I'm not even sure why. I've seen plenty of pictures of baby feet. Hundreds of them, probably. I've seen pictures of newborns cocooned in every conceivable basket and draped in every conceivable piece of burlap. I laugh about the predictability of it all, and yet I'm still so captivated with Ezekiel's feet. His baby yawns. His baby wrinkles. Because they're his, and for this short time they're also mine, and somehow that makes everything seem new again.

And I don't love Ziggy's feet because they're tinier than other baby feet, or wrinklier, or more curly. I don't love his ears because they're furrier than other ears (though perhaps they ARE furrier…) or his fingers because they grab onto my fingers in some exceptional way. I love all those things because in all their ordinary-ness they seem miraculous to me—because they grew out of me and yet they are separate from me—because they need me. I love them because they are familiar and fleeting at the same time. 

Yes, I loved every bit of my first baby, Abraham, who was so new and mysterious to me when he was born. But—now that I know what to expect so well that I almost want to cry with the loss before it even begins—every little bit becomes even more precious.

So it occurs me to me now that Heavenly Father might feel this way about us. That he might love us, in our clumsiness and our utter predictability, for the very reason that he knows that we are changing and growing and on our way to something better. Maybe he loves us because he knows what we will be, and loves even the seed of it he sees in us now. Maybe he loves to see us, not finding some original and untested way to face mortality, but revolving in the familiar patterns, struggling and stretching along the same paths that he always knew would someday lead us back where we started—but now to know the place for the first time. He doesn't love us because we're original. He loves us because we're HIS.

I know there are so many hard and bad things in the world right now. I can't say anything new about the Problem of Evil or the need for hope. I can't find original ways to describe a parent's love or the pain of loss. There's no way to lament the fleeting and bittersweet days of childhood without sounding trite. But I just can't help thinking that things would be so much better if we could all just be more aware that we are children, cocooned in a perfect Father's love. The love is always there, of course, but too often I talk myself out of feeling it, convincing myself that "if everyone is special, no one is" (a slogan I actually agree with…in other contexts).

It's so easy to assume that we have to do something clever or distinctive in order to merit that love. Easy to feel lost beneath the sparkle of other people's accomplishments. But I just keep imagining Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother leaning over to watch us the way Sam and I watch Ziggy: marveling at his little tongue, exclaiming at his dimple, laughing delightedly when he smiles at us. Not because we've never seen a baby smile before. Not because we're unaware of how hard babies can be. Not even because we think he's always going to stay as innocent and trusting and helpless as he is right now. But just because he's our baby, and we love him. Every little bit of him.