I have observed a few newborn babies lately. They all look a little stunned (when they are awake), as though the veil between pre-mortal and Earth life was not drawn gently aside when they made their way into mortality. Instead, it was stretched taught and they had to slide, head first, crashing through it, perhaps looking back to see its broken shards reflecting in each other like mirrors on opposite walls, back and back, smaller and smaller, into the fog of a swiftly fading memory. Then suddenly they are cold and the light is bright; previously shrouded noises are sharp and loud--no wonder they cry.
We can speculate about when the veil is drawn across our memories after we are born. Newborns often gaze, wobble-headed and open-mouthed, just up and over the shoulder against which they are bundled, like they're looking up at something or someone. Maybe they can see Heavenly Father and Jesus, and their now-mortal brains are mesmerized by love, gratitude, and hope as they feel the Light of Christ fill their still-traumatized souls. Maybe they're looking at their loved ones in spirit, wishing they could talk about what's happening to them and how different it is to be trapped in this little, helpless body. Or how nice it is to be cooed at and swaddled and sung to and loved. Or how weird it is to feel hunger or discomfort; how surprising to wake up and realize you must have been asleep, and where am I now and where is--Mom? Dad? Hey, I'm here! Is somebody there?
When my daughter was born, my first words to her were, "Welcome to mortality!" The obstetrician thought that an unusual thing to say. But I wasn't welcoming her to a situation that ultimately ends in death--I was welcoming her, as my sister, to the next step on her journey toward exaltation. She seemed ready for action; she looked around at everything and everyone from the protection of a soft blanket and her father's arms. A nurse commented on how alert she was. I had dreamed about her before she was born, so I knew she was a girl (in those pre-ultrasound-for-everyone days) and what she would look like when she was about 6 years old. But I was filled with surprising, overwhelming love for this tiny person with a rosebud face and big blue eyes and such a lanky body (6 lbs, 8 oz., 22 inches). Her long, brain-surgeon-or-concert-pianist fingers were folded sideways against her mouth, contemplative. She and I had a rough time getting her here, and I thought I couldn't do that again, but I would have done it again, right then, to get her.
And her brother arrived a year and 12 days later, so I was sturdier than I thought.
We sometimes think our lives are difficult, and sometimes they are. But imagine the plight of the newborn, fresh from heaven, faced with corporeality, trying to manage with a brain that's not quite all connected and a body that won't cooperate, longing to make sense of an entirely new world of sensation and sound and sight, without language or even well-organized thoughts. At the mercy of everything, unless we protect them. Hold them close, comfort them, speak and sing of love. The journey through the veil can be a shock.
