How do you follow a blog post for which you have pictures of a robin hatching from an egg? Not at all, apparently. Last week was rough — a week of unintentionally hurt feelings and a very sick foster cat, sent back home with me and unlikely to make it through the night. “Feed her anything she wants,” the vet had said, and when she refused cat food, both wet and dry, I remembered I had a jar of meat baby food left in my cabinet from when I’d rescued a lizard from the jaws of a neighborhood cat a couple of weeks ago.
I offered the jar to Tilly, but she refused. I scraped the contents into her bowl, but again she refused. Only when I scooped up the gelatinous nastiness with my poor, violated vegetarian fingers did she lap it up contentedly. I knew I had to go out for more.
CVS had none. I briefly contemplated asking, “Don’t you have any MEAT baby food?” but I couldn’t bring myself to say it, so I drove across the street to the Walgreen’s, and they had it. I gathered four each of chicken and turkey in my arms and got in line.
The man in front of me was serious, eyes downcast, but I noticed the young guy behind the cash register beaming. He yawned dramatically, announcing, “There’s another one!” as the customer gathered his purchases and hurried away. I spilled the contents of my arms onto the conveyor belt and saw the young man’s eyes light up. He leaned across to me, confidentially, before saying loudly, with a knowing nod at the baby food jars and a hopeful glance around for a greater audience than me, “I just had one last night. A girl.”
“Congratulations!” I exclaimed and he beamed even brighter than before. He said it was killing him to be at work, and I said how unfair it was. He should get a baby moon to just hold and bliss out on his little girl. He laughed, gratefully, eyes wide with surprise at my insistence. “I can’t wait until I get off and can go back to her.”
I congratulated him again and started to leave, glancing back one more time to see him leaning against the cash register, smiling and playing tenderly with the hospital band on his wrist. I smiled and felt full, having gotten to witness this new father’s joy. My feelings, petty and real and heavy from the week slid off my shoulders and I felt hope, for this new father and his baby girl and for Tilly, who might live after all, and for me, who got to see such a beautiful raw moment; this new father, working his day job, selling meat baby food to a vegetarian. And I thought of how we do ordinary things every day, when extraordinary things are happening all around us — birth and death and marriage and illness and sorrow and adventures. And in those moments, when our ordinary intersects with someone else’s extraordinary, we find humanity and hope and sameness and beauty.
My own extraordinary: a new father with our baby girl (almost 8 years ago)
Awesome post, Emily. Keep it up.
Wow, Emily, I finally got a chance to visit your blog… this is lovely, your words are lovely and powerful, and I’m thrilled to embark on this with you.
Thank you for taking the time to share your words with us.
Absolutely beautiful. That’s one of the things I miss about not being at the library any more. I loved hearing of new babies, new jobs, and other happy moments that people just had to share.