Of all The Interior News traditions, our annual Beautiful Babies feature in this week’s edition (Pages A25-27) is perhaps the most joyful.
For what is more inspiring, more evocative of love, more engendering of hope, more life-changing than holding your newborn child?
Those of us who have already experienced that singular experience, know what it feels like to achieve a new depth of love and caring we did not know was possible.
We know that nothing in the world is ever the same once we have children in it with us. And as they grow and develop, we are not just observers of their experience, but feel it as if it were our own.
Their joy and wonder is our joy and wonder. Their scrapes and bruises are our scrapes and bruises. Their triumphs, our triumphs, their failures, our failures.
The new parents of 2020, of course, were faced with unique challenges, and yet we have no doubt that those were all moot when the blessed moment came.
Despite all the trials and tribulations of the year that was, all those shining little faces born in 2020 reflect the optimism and hope that only a child can engender, not just for the parents, but for all of us.
And what is it about these little diamonds in the rough that is so compelling?
“Children have neither past nor future. They enjoy the present, which very few of us do,” wrote the 17th century French philosopher Jean De La Bruyere.
To all the new parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins in the valley, congratulations. We wish only the best for you and your new family members.
Enjoy the present.
