THANKFUL FRIDAY

In April of 2018, Tammy Duckworth, a senator from Illinois, became the first use senator to cast a vote on the Senate floor with her newborn. Sen. Duckworth’s baby was just a week old and she wanted to be able to keep her baby close while still doing her job as a senator and previous rules of the Senate only allowed Senators and a few aids on the floor during votes. The Senate changed those rules to include children under the age of one. Sen. Duckworth thanked her colleagues for “recognizing that sometimes new parents also have responsibilities at work.” This was a huge step forward in recognizing the struggles of working parents, but that’s not the topic I want to discuss. The thing that I want to talk about is the reaction all of those Senators had towards that newborn when Sen. Duckworth rolled her into Chambers. Every single Senator in that room melted. They all wanted a chance to peak at the swaddled baby. Everyone was smiling. Joy filled up that space.

Now, I will always be an advocate for abortion rights. My body, my choice and it’s none of your business. I will also strongly stand by my decision to not have children. By no means does either of those two beliefs mean that I don’t like children. Quite the opposite. In particular, there is nothing more soothing than gently rocking side to side while holding a baby against your chest. Babies just have this beautiful ability to calm and bring joy. While I do believe that the world would change for the better if we all just took twenty minutes to lay down in final relaxation, I also believe that twenty minutes of gently rocking a baby would have the same effect. It seems that I am compiling a list of things that would make people calmer and happier: final relaxation, babies, puppies, kittens, roller skates and scooters. Maybe baby goats.

Tomorrow marks the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks. For some of us, it’s really hard to image that it has been twenty years since such a horrific event occurred. Those events have morphed and changed this country in truly awful ways, but there were some good changes to remember. There were about a hundred babies born in the weeks that followed 9/11 whose fathers had died in the attacks. Jenna Jacobs, interviewed by People Magazine in 2016 in regards to her son who was born six days after the death of his father said “These children are what comes after 9/11. They are the joy, the salve, the ointment. They’re the love.”

One of the men that was in J’s unit recently had a baby and they named the new baby after J. In fact they call him Jaybird, which is a nickname we used for J. This week, my brother, Randy and sister-in-law, Katrina got to spend the evening with this little family. Katrina got to hold and snuggle this baby and they all had such a wonderful evening together. I could tell by the brief texts that I had with Katrina afterward that both she and Randy left that visit with fuller hearts. What a beautiful gift this man has given to my family by naming his newborn after J. I hope that meeting Jaybird was a healing salve for Katrina.

If you get a chance to cuddle a baby (or a puppy) today, do it. You won’t regret it.