Peek-a-Boo!

Peek-a-Boo!

A sweet video by Pandora has been making the internet rounds lately.  Maybe you’ve seen it.  It features several blindfolded children who attempt to pick out their mothers from a group of women.  Grab a tissue, and you can see it here.

Even without seeing them, the children quickly discern this one’s mine by touch, smell, or some familiar invisible love vibe that radiates from their mothers when they draw near.  Immediately after the birth of my first child, when the nurse placed the swaddled cocoon in my arms, we drank each other in.  I was delighted to finally meet this little person I’d been so preoccupied with for the past nine months.  “Hello!”  I told her, “There you are!” as if I’d been searching high and low for just this thing.  And of course I had been.   She rewarded me by reaching up a wavering starfish hand and touching my cheek.  Pat, pat.  “Calm down, ma,” she seemed to say, “It’s just me.”

From then on with both my children it was constant drool (mine, not theirs).  Memorizing, touching, and kissing each little part.  The whorl of perfect ears, the flat button nose, the rounded belly and folds of baby fat in their kicky legs.  I couldn’t keep my hands off them, constantly nom-nomming the soles of their feet and little sausage toes.  At the end of each naptime, when they’d wake up sweaty and sleepy-eyed in their crib, it was always a fresh discovery to open the nursery door to their expectant, hopeful faces.   Mom! There you are!  Every time–every time–I’d open the door to find this little person waiting for me it was a surprise, as if the time lapse of nap time would have wafted this sudden role of motherhood away like white puffs of baby powder.

We are born empty vessels needing to be filled.  We are born searching for connection, our eyes seeking contact, our limbs flailing nervously until they are swaddled and held.

It’s the reason children play peek-a-boo, especially endlessly, it seems, between the cracks in the airline seats on long flights.  In their play, they are asking the old existential question:  if I am lost, will I be found?  If I disappear, will anyone notice?   They test it again and again, and when they are discovered–peek-a-boo, I see you!–the giggles of delight are uncontainable and contagious.

Several of our friends have gone or are going through the process of adopting a child.  There must be no greater act of human grace than this, to choose a child, wrap them tightly in love, and give them the assurance that from now on, there is someone who sees them, loves them, has found them.  They matter, they belong, no matter what.

Marianne Williamson said the whole world is an orphan’s home.  We are all of us waiting in the wings to be chosen, found, loved.  We are lost children at Disney World, swimming in a sea of knees and strollers, spinning around wildly searching for someone who’ll rush over and hold us tight–there you are!  Thank goodness I found you!

This video strikes such a chord, I think, because so many of us are dying of loneliness and our one true wish is to be discovered, treasured, and known.  We have hundreds of online “friends,” but few deep connections.  We are afraid to really be seen, but are craving exactly that.  These questions–do I matter?  does anyone see me?–dog us the rest of our lives like a black mongrel.  If you are lucky, you have a mother, sister, or best friend.  People who, in a crowd at the county fair, you could immediately detect in the sea of humanity, your eyes lighting on them, giving you a surge of connection, a lightness in your breath.  There they are!   Your tribe.  They fill your vessel.

Trouble is, our holding capacity is endless.   Most of us have cracks in our vessels from being dropped a time or two, kicked around and chipped.  Never mind how much you may have been filled in the past, the cracks and fissures are a slow leak.  Eventually, the jug will run dry, and in our fear, we scramble to plug the dike with our thumbs.  This can make us mean and selfish, hoarders of joy, stingy with our supply.  It is this sort of thing that makes Jesus pinch the bridge of his nose and head for the vineyard at the end of the day.

Be a seer, a finder, a filler.  Deliberately take a second to make someone feel discovered, and like a miracle, the level of joy in your own vessel rises.   There’s a story about hell that goes like this:  everyone is seated at a banquet table, a delicious soup before them.  They all have spoons but their handles are too long to reach their own mouths, so they are miserable, desperate and starving.  In heaven it’s the same thing; same table, same soup, same spoons.  Except here, everyone feeds someone else within their arm’s reach and no one is hungry.

Do this especially with your teenagers.  See them.  Find them.  Remember when they were small nubbins of yummyness.  When they come slouching into the kitchen grousing and moody, be happy, even delighted to see them–there you are!  They are already developing hairline fissures in their cisterns and are feeling invisible, misunderstood, unknown.

Do this with the EGR people.  Extra Grace Required.  You know who they are.  They’ve scrabbled, hoarded, and plugged for so long they’ve become desperate and would take you down with them like a person who’s drowning.  See them.  Fill them, even if it’s just a teaspoon at a time.  They’re dirty-faced orphans, like you.

Do this with the people who seem to have it all together, living snappy crisp lives.   Really see them.  They sometimes work the hardest to keep it all going, and they’re tired, exhausted really; it’s endless work, all the spackling and maintaining.

Along the way, your own vessel fills.  There is a secret underground spring that bubbles up from beneath.  Sometimes other long-handled spoon people dose you and quench that thirst.  Grace multiplies like the loaves and fishes.  It fills you up, holds you over its shoulder and softly pats you on the back, there you are, there you are.