It was not the first bottle of milk, but one of the first. His mother begins work in a few days; today is a welcome to the world for this five-month old boy.

What he wanted: Milk, Mother, Maternal, to receive ’til sated, to sleep on the breast. What the world offered: his mother’s milk, father’s arms, to accept or not accept the blessing available, to be sated or not sated, to sleep satisfied or not sleep.

I suppose the transition is not so easy, maybe made easier when there is abundant love, when the heart is open to receive it, and when the body relaxes into that embrace. That was the narrative of the day, following my breath and making it gentle, even where (especially where) there was uncertainty whether Elan would take the offered comfort, and anxiety arose in me: I breathed that anxiety in, and when I breathed out, the mist cleared.

I thought, as I held this sleeping child, that this life is a repeated unfolding, the bud of a rose, unwrapped. Where every threshold holds within its frame the same breathless moment — a moment that seems an eternity, but is not — and the opportunity to grow, resolute and forward-living.

The mother’s arms, the early schools, the expanding Halls of Facts and the learning that takes place because of them or in spite of them. The first time away from home, and the running back; the second time away from home that was more permanent. The procession of little lives to larger lives. The leave-taking, in all directions along the line of time. The expanding Universe witnessed in the Self.

The future was present, here with the boy in my arms, my grown children in their changing places, my partner returning to her work, the breast becoming bottle, the bottle becoming a plate, the body aging, the aging body.

Suddenly, it occurred to me, the Earth is a womb, this life is a womb, and the arrow that was strung when my spark took flesh flies uninterrupted through all the days of this life and beyond it. Asked again and again to depart what has been and embrace what becomes, in the end, far larger than anything these words can pen, or this mind can imagine.

In the interim that is Me, and you, and all of us: here’s to the unfolding.

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