I heard Mila before I saw her. The restaurant was empty a few minutes ago except for a handful of employees and me. But I heard Mila cry, so I knew there was a baby in the house.
I’d seen pictures of Mila before, but I’d never seen her in person. She was born almost 4 months ago to one of the managers here and I’d been wanting to meet her. Her father was called into work, so he had to drop her off with her mom while someone came to pick her up. In the 15 minutes she was here, I finally got to meet this little bundle of joy and love.
She’s a very serious baby and she seemed to be taking the entire world in with her huge brown eyes. She regarded me with intense curiosity. Then she eagerly took my finger in her tiny hand and squeezed it tightly as she gave me the only smile I saw from her.
Babies seem to be filled with curiosity and wonder at this tender age — and they spark a sense of love and delight for me. There are few things in the world that fill me with hope the way a new life does.
I have no idea what this little girl faces. Nobody does.
But at this point, her life is a book of blank pages waiting to be written. She hasn’t learned that some people hate each other. She hasn’t seen the worst of her fellow humans. There are so many possibilities about what she could become and what she could experience over the next hundred years.
What will Mila become? Who will she be? Who will she love? Who will break her heart? What contribution will she make to the long chain of humanity that’s come before her?
Her grandparents all came from Central America. Her parents grew up as Americans with one foot in each of two cultures. She will grow up among her fellow Americans with little understanding of where her family was a couple of generations ago.
And she can be whatever she wants to be.
I think that’s why babies make me so happy. They haven’t experienced the hurts and pains that life inevitably brings to all of us. They haven’t been shaped by things they would rather not have experienced. All the possibilities are open to them.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve felt fiercely protective of children — and I feel that way about Mila tonight. I wish there were a way for me to make sure that Mila would never be hurt and never experience the ugly parts of life that I’ve seen and that so many of us have experienced.
I wish she could remain innocent and happy and loved. She has so much ahead of her.