Baby Dreams and Reincarnation

Well, Emily is 10 days old today, and gaining weight healthily. We took her to the library today with my mom, took pictured of the little lady's first trip to the library, of course. Emily is soo adorable. My favorite thing is when she is lying on my lap and she grabs the fingers of my hand with hers. Two fingers, pinky and index , each clasped by five little pink fingers with nails the size of nail clippings of my own. And such dark blue eyes. I don't know when they will start to change color but for now they are so dark it gives the appearance of huge pupils. She is extremely well behaved, eats well and regularly, she HATES being in dirty diapers, and already has a distinctive cry for hunger, having dirty diapers, and just wanting to be held.

Some nights I have had terrifying dreams of losing her in the bed or endangering her. The most common is that she is in bed between Danine and myself, I pull the covers over her to keep her warm, then pull them back and she is gone. When I have this dream it tends to be more than once (say five times), and I wake up Danine with my frantic pawing and searching o fthe bed clothes, not sure if I have woken from the dream or if I dreamed waking up, but feeling that the stakes are far too high not to maintain my search. Hopefully Danine will backhand me before I keep her up too much. She is an incredible mother. Selfless, dedicated, getting naps in as she can, so very tender and thoughtful, I love to watch her feeding Emily, gazing at her daughter with endless affection. Before the birth Danine said she was worried she might not love the baby. Now I have to take a number to see my wife while Emile seems to have the first 99 numbers (total exaggeration, but true in a relative, pre-Emily vs post-Emily world).

So today we got a video from the library on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I respect Buddhism and its religious variants, including the Tibetan ones. One thing I see common to so many religions is an afterlife. The Egyptians had mummies and pyramids, Christians have heaven (or hell), Mormons and Muslim men go to private realms full of women, and Hinduism and religious Buddhism have reincarnation. Yeah, any way you look at it, everyone is afraid to die. Every one wants to go on in a better place, but, at the same time, wants their acts in this world to influence where they go, that way they behave pleasantly (hopefully) in this life. It is not surprising that so many different traditions deal with this problem in such a similar way, and throw in a social behavioral modifier into the bargain. I guess all societies are faced with the same damnable crisis- human nature is erratic, and all the more so when the fear of death or of the unknown is involved. The most terrifying aspect of the "unknown" aspect of death is, of course, that despite its unknown nature, it is certain. Guaranteed. Assured. Perfectly known. 100%. Inevitable.

I am a man of an under-developed sense of fear, at least towards myself. I take precautions for myself, hedge my bets, invest in my 401K and retirement accounts. But those dream I have of misplacing my daughter terrify me a thousand fold more than any dream I may have had in which I am being chased, shot at, assaulted, or you name it. Someday I will die, but with her precious little life (and hopefully several more from the same source) on its journey through life, I just want to be here to safeguard the way until the day I hand her off to some equally cautious and overly protective man. At least, I hope thats her taste in men.




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