Perspectives from Ryan...

My brother wrote this post yesterday and it is just too sweet not to share.

He is an AMAZING writer, totally worth following if you don't already do so.

Enjoy Ryan's take on our new Max!

Of Nephews and Novels

15AUG20101 Comment

by PagingDrPoling in Current Events 

What is precious to me?

One week ago, I met the newest member of my family: my nephew, Max. Barely four days old and far shy of eight pounds, he was as small a human being as I had ever seen. He flailed about madly, mouth groping blindly for a bottle. This tiny creature, too helpless to even support the weight of the brain that gives him his humanity, is my relative, my genes, my own flesh and blood, and holding him in my arms is at once a lesson in my strength and my weakness, my hope and my frailty, my helpless past and my as-yet-to-be-determined future. And he is my sister’s son. He is not a child that my older sister is babysitting; he is my sister’s child.

Few things have been clearer to me about my sister than that she is wired for motherhood and has been for as long as I have known her. She has always been a mother first and a sister second. (Thankfully she has learned, slowly but surely, to stop mothering me.) Children, younger brothers, high schoolers, anyone placed in her care, has enjoyed and benefited from her benevolent maternal glow. And this is no more apparent to me than when I watch her with Max. The grass is green, the sky is blue, and my sister was born to be a mother; these are the immutable truths of my world.

I have little doubt that my sister would call Max her most prized possession. He isprecious to her, and she is such a good mother because of her love. Psychology and theology alike have their explanations for why the mother-child bond exists (oxytocin or imago Dei, take your pick), but let’s just say for a minute that this bond arises because the mother understands, at a deep, preverbal level, that this child is an act of creation. My sister loves Max because Max is made in her image. That which she creates, that which bears her image, is precious to her.

But what is precious to me?

It is now quarter to three in the morning, and I have just spent the last hour or so reading through some of my old writing. I have a folder on my computer, appropriately titled “Writing”, that contains every single thing I have written since high school. All of my journals, all of my love letters, all of my research papers and reflections and ruminations, they are all saved digitally in this one folder. Someday when I tire of this blog, I’ll export its contents into a Word document and save it in my Writing folder as well (probably somewhere in the “Jots and Tittles” subfolder – I’ll explain later). For now, however, reading through my old school papers and half-written short stories brings me a deep and satisfying peace. These words are precious to me. Should I lose my Writing folder in a hard drive crash, I would feel as though I lost a part of myself (assuming, of course, that the two other hard drives and one online backup also fail). My Writing folder is my most prized possession. It cannot be sold for a price because its contents are made in my image. That which I create, that which bears my image, is precious to me.

I have yet to experience fatherhood (thankfully), and I have only begun to experience uncledom. I do know, however, that I am driven to create, and my creations are precious to me. Perhaps Max has inherited the penchant for writing that his grandfather and grandmother passed to his uncle. Perhaps someday he, too, will learn the joy of the written word and create an anthology all his own. What will be precious to him?

But that is a question for later. For now, his only task is to grow, fully nurtured by his mother’s love.