A Year of Brightness

I asked the obstetrician not to close the curtains. The wall of the delivery room was one giant picture window, several floors up. Privacy was no concern, unless someone in the parking garage a block away had a telescope trained on the room. Given that unlikelihood, I wanted the curtains open. It had been a hell of a night, and I wanted the sky, openness, air. Light.

There was a thunderstorm later; driving rain that soothed exhausted nerves and drained away my tension as it silked down the other side of another picture window, in my recovery room. I cradled my sleeping newborn to my chest, breathing the earthy, strangely acrid birth-scent from the soft wisps of his hair, and watched rivulets of brightness break shivering cracks across vague masses of cloud.

A year later, I remember the search, the frustrating dig for a name for this, our second son, the one we were so naively sure would be a girl we hadn't even thought about boy's names until the ultrasound broke the news. I found his verse before I found his name.

And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. Daniel 12:3





I fell in love. Brightness. We found a name that meant "bright", and I wanted to pair it with "Sky", but it was voted down as sounding too feminine, despite such historic masculine precedents as characters played by Marlon Brando. We compromised. Combined it with a family name, prefaced it with the name of a well-known author and apologist, one who, even posthumously, still leads many to righteousness. It is a noble and complex title, and will look aristocratic on his engraved stationery, if he ever has any.

But the original name, the "bright" name, is what we call him. Despite well-meaning grandparents who stubbornly use his first name so that "he'll know what it is by the time he gets to school", despite the clunky awkwardness of having to explain to people who ask his name. Because it is what he is.

Brightness shines from his crystal blue eyes, radiates from his face when he smiles. It sings in his burbly baby laughter, a thread of joy underlying every squeal and inquisitive babble.

His focus is like a laser, trained in intensity on the business at hand. I see it in his concentration as he eschews a toy hammer to methodically push pegs through his pegboard with a delicate, precise forefinger. I see it in his complete absorption in pushing a toy car along the floor, tuning out all external stimuli. I see it when I turn from putting groceries away and find him doing this in the middle of the kitchen floor:

Two days before his birthday, he began giving kisses - untrained, unsolicited, unrehearsed; I returned from an errand and he leaned from the babysitter's arms into mine and placed his little puckered rosebud mouth on my lips for an instant, smacking his at just the right moment. Since then his kisses are abundant yet never enough; tiny sparks of delicious sweetness and surprise, they never appear on demand but are awarded entirely on his own terms...perhaps because I am too liable, upon receiving one, to take him captive and smother him with return affection. It is irresistible. From the silky honey-strands of hair just beginning to spiral around his ears, the velvetine curve of his belly, to the smooth unscarred bottoms of his feet, he is delicious.

I know that baby sweetness doesn't last forever. There will be days when the smell of sweaty boy in my house will send me over the edge, when open chip bags on the counters and swigs of milk straight from the jug will prompt the "born in a barn" sarcasm, when noogies and wedgies and all the other odd workings-out of brotherly affection look too much like hostility to me. When I will think his name is much too big for him and we should have tempered our lofty visions. Then, most of all, I will need to remember this first year. This year when, with a child's faith, he reaches for rainbows. And even seems to catch them.

A year of brightness. The first, God willing, of many.

Let there be light.


The starry sky image is used with the permission of my friend Jared, who, besides being one of the coolest and most interesting young men in existence, is also one of the most talented photographers I know. Check out his blogs here and here to see more of his work.