The Baby

I thought it would be a good idea to take the red eye, just take some Nyquil. I didn’t realize my economy seat would be inverted, making it nearly impossible to fall asleep, but with the help of the sedative I somehow managed to balance my head on my neck and conk out. As soon as I was asleep, the flight attendant came by and shouted, “Rubbish!” straight into my ear. Really? He knows we don’t all fly redeyes for a living, right? I’m writing an email as soon as we get off this plane. For the rest of the flight I played that game where you try to flip a ball on a string in a little wooden cup, except the ball was my head. Finally the captain announced we were descending. Clipped by jet lag, my cheerful excitement to visit family for Christmas was fading fast.

 I, the saint that I am, full of grace in my spiritual flailings, tried to forgive the flight attendant and let it slide. “It’s not his fault you chose to take the red eye,” I argued with myself. So instead of writing an email, I turned into Larry David and told everyone how idiotic the flight attendant was for prioritizing trash collection over the passengers circadian rhythm. 

 Juiced up with spiritual credit from my beautiful act of “forgiveness”, I texted my also super spiritual friend, whose enlightenment seems more advanced than mine, and proceeded to brag about how it was going to be the best Christmas ever because I didn’t have any expectations. I was a blank canvas and whatever the following week painted would be what it would be. I was one with the Universe. 

It turns out I did have a couple expectations.  

I had known for nine months that my sister was having a baby around Christmas time, but as the holidays approached, and the due date zeroed in on Christmas Eve, it began to bother me. It would be the first baby in our immediate family and I would become an uncle, but I didn’t really see the big deal. Part of me was excited but another part of me was annoyed at the inconvenience. How badly is this going to affect my Christmas? I came down from my high cave of spiritual self-righteousness and found myself the Grinch. The jet lag didn’t help. 

 I wanted everything to be the same as it used to. I wanted to go to church and listen to Rick Warren make sense about God and then leave cheerfully singing Feliz Navidad, the best Christmas tradition ever. Instead, I found myself queasy in a dark auditorium full of rich white people at a mega-church in Newport Beach. The band dressed in all black and played techno-rock renditions of Christmas classics. I was spoon fed a PC sermon with entertaining videos custom tailored to the exact audience Jesus seemed to care about the least: rich people. I wished the guy had just come out and said, “Sorry, Kingdom’s not for you. Christmas is canceled.” But that wouldn’t have been so good for his lucrative preaching career. 

 Luckily, I had a clock in front of me with the seconds ticking away. I used it to practice holding my breath. 

While depriving myself of oxygen, instead of accepting the service for what it was, a celebration of the Incarnation, I tried to imagine what Jesus would have actually done if he was there. Would he have sat in the back quietly and humbly forgave the mega-church for their ignorance? Would he have awkwardly enjoyed it like when your family sings Happy Birthday to you at the restaurant, and even though you hate the attention, you smile and receive it? Or would he have tried to run on stage screaming, “Stop! Stop!” only to get tackled by security and arrested by the cops? Surely, he was on my side. This was an atrocity. 

I settled on he would have probably never made it to the service, instead helping a single mom change a flat tire in the parking lot, then talking story with the guy making kettle corn outside. “So, what’s the perfect ratio of sugar and salt?”

 The next day was Christmas Eve and I wanted everything to be the same there, too. This was a lot to ask because my Mom likes to switch things up. We used to always have a prime roast and then one year, outta nowhere, lasagna. Since we’re so Italian? (That first year she accidentally bought the meatless kind. My Dad and I exchanged looks and muffled eye rolls, and struggled to just accept it.) I hoped for a prime roast this year. We had lasagna. One year we randomly decided to play Bunco, which is a really fun game, the first nine rounds. No one told me the game takes four hours. We used to receive matching PJ’s. We used to get fun ornaments. Even the schedule was different this year. For my whole life Christmas Eve was the same: Grandma & Grandpa arrive with a Red Tahoe full of presents. We go to church. We sing Feliz Navidad. We come home and eat. We open the presents. And the whole family was always together. This year, we got church out of the way on the 23rd, which was actually a blessing because the 24th was a Sunday which meant there was football on. Since I stopped going to church a while ago, that was the preferred way to spend Christmas Eve. But the whole family was not together. 

The real humdinger wrench in my Christmas Eve was that my sister Natalie and her husband Chris were gone. They were too busy having a baby. Couldn’t she just hold it? 

It was a big deal to have them missing because, not only were they family, more importantly they were key components to my typical shenanigans, like how we always tried to stomp each other's toes in the pre-dinner prayer circle, or exchanged glances of silliness across the table. Their absence irritated me. We actually bowed our heads and behaved. It didn’t feel like Christmas Eve at all. I bet they weren’t even thinking about Christmas nine months ago. 

Christmas Day was a blur. Usually, Christmas morning is invigorating. This year it felt like waking up on a Monday. Still feeling lagged, I came down the stairs and found everyone at the table saying “Good morning!” instead of “Merry Christmas!” It was as if we all knew Jesus wasn’t born on this exact day two thousand years ago, and we were tired of pretending that he was. Which is a bummer because it’s a lot better if you do. Plus, sweet baby Jesus was not the most important baby this year. That was clear. 

We didn’t open any gifts, we had already done it the night before. We just went straight into breakfast and baby talk. 

My sister was at the hospital in labor. Her water broke at 5am Christmas Eve morning, which was only about twelve hours prior to my prediction: the exact second the roast beast, I mean lasagna, hit my plate. 

We discussed what to do when the baby came. Do we go the second it’s pooped out? Is there a mandatory waiting period? We had no idea. The consensus was we would go when Natalie tells us to. For the past two weeks we had been guessing when exactly birth would be, starting with the day and now ruminating on the exact time. As each incorrect guess passed, the answers were updated. I plopped onto the couch to watch football and updated my prediction that the baby would come the second we walked through the door at Grandma’s house. My positivity didn’t survive the red eye. Maybe the flight attendant collected it in his rubbish bag. 

But I battled my inner Grinch. I tried to accept this unorthodox Christmas. I didn’t let my annoyance snowball into bitterness and resentment. I sincerely tried to stay present, which meant tuning out the world with a meaningless football game. Major growth, right? At least I was sober. 

Turns out the baby was born soon after we walked through the door at Grandmas, but luckily we were waiting on the go-ahead from my sister. She wanted some alone time with her husband before we all bombarded in. I respected that. It also fit well into my preferred schedule. I admitted to myself that the baby was not, in fact, going to ruin Christmas in any way whatsoever. No expectations, huh? I ruefully smiled at yet another spiritual failure and stepped out of the Grinch costume. 

I was relieved to find Grandma’s was pretty much the same as always. It was the same speed dating of relatives: a series of one to three minute life updates. I always abruptly ended these by suddenly becoming distracted by the snack table, turning my back and just sort of drifting away, like I was socially challenged. If we were talking, and I started eyeing the cookies, your time was coming to an end. What am I supposed to do? Sit in a chair and yell out, “Next!”? 

We watched more football. My uncle talked about his watch. He took it off and passed it to my brother in law via my hands. On its way back, I held it for a beat to see why it was so cool, but my uncle snatched it out of my hands like he could sense I just didn’t get it.

I offended my littlest sister with a sly comment after she put an entire bowl of chicken into the microwave, pressed 30 seconds and walked away. I tried but just couldn’t unsee the metaphor for an entire generation. “Uh, Chloe? I think we’re gunna need to do a bit longer…” I laughed. She stormed out with a grunt. Seemed like her Christmas wasn’t going as planned, either. 

My Grandma selflessly slaved away in the kitchen without wanting any credit, as she’s been doing her whole life. I’m pretty sure I thanked her. I know for a fact I hugged her tight and told her I love her so much. But it didn’t seem enough, it never does. I wanted to give her years off my life, but she would have never accepted anyways. 

I ate a huge plate of food and I took a nap on the couch in the middle of everything. My cousin took a picture of it. I called one of my favorite relatives the wrong name. Yeah, it was a typical Christmas at Grandmas. 

Around five in the evening, right when the game of the day was starting, my mom bursted into the living room and heralded, “We’re going to see the baby!” Oh, well. I looked at my favorite cousin who had walked in the door fifteen minutes ago and said, “Welp, see ya next year!” We laughed and hugged. 

We got our ID stickers at the hospital and the elevator spit us out on the fifth floor. We clucked around like pigeons looking for the correct door. I won the game by figuring out we had to use the phone on the wall and go this way. The nurse on the other line informed me of the policy. 

“Okay,” I hung up. “She said only two at a time.” 

The door opened and my Mom jogged through, looked back at us and said, “Ah come on! It’s Christmas!” I smiled at the source of my disdain for authority and we all scurried in behind our fearless leader. We entered the room and the nurse hastily exited, annoyed by our rebellion.

The room had a thick holiness that arrested me. The second I saw the baby boy, Bennett, resting softly on my sister’s chest, everything changed. All my jet lagged animosity vanished. All my Christmas expectations lost their importance. I was stunned by grace, the type of pure grace only a newborn can bring to a mostly tedious existence. Time changed. We were floating. I looked around for wisemen.  

There he was, when just hours ago he wasn’t. The baby was life, embodied. Completely pure existence. Faultless. Flawless. Perfect. Without sin and inherently good. He was God’s perfect presence here in the flesh. He could not talk, could not move, could not see, he just was; and we fully, passionately and unreservedly loved him for it. We loved him for no other reason. We didn’t talk about what he would grow up to be; if he’d be a football player or a surfer or an artist; if he’d be a saint or a class clown or an honor student. We didn’t speculate on any of that. We stood wonderstruck by his perfect existence. We passed him around. Some of us cried. Chloe balled. 

It was surreal. I felt like a moron for not knowing it would be like this. 

My own birthday was a couple weeks after Christmas. I was once the spotless child on my mother’s chest. I too came into the world as God’s perfect presence, life embodied, pure existence, my true self. And there was a room full of people who were in awe of me for nothing I had done. The wise men were there with gifts: a surfboard, wax and a leash.

I think God still looks at us like we were just born. How could he not? If me, a jet-lagged, selfish, spiritual wannabe who was semi-bitter about the timing of his nephew’s birth, and the rest of my ordinary family, could so effortlessly see the magic of life in the presence of that baby, the sheer goodness of it all, how much more does God see all of us, all of creation, that same way, all the time?

I want to see myself like that. I think part of the goal of true spirituality is to get us back into that hospital room, looking at ourselves when we were four hours old, where we were unstained by pride and pain. To see we are the same being. To fully accept oneself, to celebrate our own existence, like we were fully accepted and celebrated on the day we were born. That’s the point of a birthday, to taste the elixir of life: the appreciation of our simple existence. To really know how good it is to be alive. Each day, each moment, each breath is a continuation of the moment we were incarnated. 

My own birthday is a couple weeks after Christmas and my family wanted to celebrate before I left. I resisted at first but eventually saw the arrogance of refusing to allow my family to sing me Happy Birthday and give me presents. One of the gifts I got was a watch. A gold Casio, simple and elegant. It was heavier than it looked. I’m not much of a watch guy, but I really liked it. 

Reflecting on my birthday and my trip home for Christmas, I realized I had been so preoccupied with what I expected to happen, that I missed what was actually happening right in front of me: a baby on Christmas!; an exact parallel of the miracle that started the whole thing, when on a cold, starlit night, God’s presence unexpectedly came to us in the form of a baby, and God and humanity became one. Then I thought of all the instances where time was involved: holding my breath with the clock at church, making fun of my sister for the time on the microwave, my Uncle’s watch passing through my hands, and then the vintage gold Casio. I realized time is the most valuable gift. I get to be here. Can’t that be enough?

For most of us it’s not. But I know, I get it, it can be hard to appreciate, all this fluffy stuff. We’re not philosophers, monks or spiritual guru’s. We’re just trying to live our best life, trying to make some money, be happy, and not hold grudges against babies and flight attendants. But what if we’ve been doing it mostly wrong? What if our “best life” was inside of us the day we were born, and it’s still here, waiting for us to slow down enough to recognize it? What if we don’t have to wait until we get cancer, or someone dies, to realize how precious it all is?

Luckily, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. The Light is neither on our off it flickers. What’s important is that we know there is a Light. We cannot hold truth, but in incremental moments, we can recognize it holding us. In other words, we can be normal, spiritually flailing people and profoundly enlightened at the same time. Otherwise, I’m screwed. If we’re flailing, it means we’re trying, and that’s what counts. If for one second we can connect to the Eternal Now the way we did when we came into the world, we’re onto something.  

I know some people have a hard time celebrating themselves. It feels weird to be special for a day, especially when we don’t believe we are. Other people turn their birthday into a whole week and others have the audacity to celebrate a birthday month. Somehow that gold watch, baby Bennett and baby Jesus were all telling me the same message: In God’s eyes, in reality, every day is our birthday. Each day, each moment, each breath, is a continuation of the moment we were incarnated. Time is a gift.

Nothing’s changed. Your innocence has not been lost. Overlook your grossness and continually remember your existence. Everyday is your birthday, so celebrate continuously. And if you’re doing it right, each day might feel like being born again.