The Human Family: Babies are Universal

Mama Ira took this photo

It was a lazy Sunday morning. Vova, his wife Ira, and their new baby Margarita, almost 7 months old, were in our neighborhood and called to see if they could drop by. I had not seen them since their baby was born and I was delighted.

Vova and Ira met in college, have traveled in Europe, and lived for a while in London. Vova speaks excellent English. His speciality is some esoteric energy field, at which he excels. Ive seen photos of International conferences he's attended. This educated young couple, like thousands of others, long to live and work abroad, where they believe there is more opportunity. But it's hard to get documentation, visas, and passports to live in another country, unless you have an employer who will help you. Other factors complicate the process, not least of which is the concern for a "brain drain" in a country that needs skilled workers.

For this Sunday visit though, the star of the show was Margarita. Luba spread out a comforter on the living room floor for the baby to play on, and we took turns googling her and trying to make her smile. We were on our hands and knees like the mothers we used to be, when our own children were babies. It was as if nothing had changed, except we are now babushkas.

Babies are universal: the way they grow, learn, show curiosity, grasp objects, put them in their mouths to chew on and soothe in-coming teeth; the way they reach out for mama and papa when strangers are vying for their attention (and at seven months they know the difference). It's a miracle how infants develop, driven by an inner curiosity and need to explore. They may have sweetly different personaltiies, but not nationalities, not yet. Ukrainian or American, it's all the same. They are just babies, all with the same inner need to grow.

Why, I've long wondered, don't we retain this natural-born curiosity, this need to grow? Instead, experience seems to etch grooves of anxiety and pain, fear and inhibition. Perhaps that is the human condition as well, this loss of innocence, this loss of curiosity and wonder. Perhaps that's what we spend the rest of our adult lives striving to achieve once again. Perhaps that defines our purpose for living until we die.

Margarita is beautiful and strong, getting ready to crawl, scooting toward objects she wants, pulling herself up to a standing position, smiling all the while, always checking to make sure mama is there.

I could tell that for Luba this return to mothering babies was bittersweet. She remembes her Sergei and her Vitaly, now grown men, now with bigger problems. But the life cycle is universal, without boundaries, the same everywhere, from babies to toddlers, to teens to adults. Luba and I looked at each other and smiled, as Ira and Vova lovingly played with and sheltered their child, to them the most beautiful, the smartest, the most wonderful human being on earth.