Yesterday's post was perhaps melodramatic and overblown--however, as much as I'd like to moderate my feelings about my own baby crying, how I described it yesterday is pretty much how I feel sometimes. Not all the time.
And yet--maybe lightness springs up most successfully from sorrow...it reminds me of an old Greek poet from whom I had the good fortune to take a couple literature classes. He spent a good portion of each class session describing some aspect of his past or musing about the future--and because he'd lived a rich, eventful life, these long digressions proved just as fascinating as anything he said about poetry and art. During one class he described his experience in London during World War II. What was really terrifying was the Germans' V-2 Rocket, he told us--unlike the V-1, the V-2 came in silently. You didn't know it was coming--the only sign it was out there was a sudden explosion, perhaps just a few houses away from you, perhaps right on top of you. After the long, horrendous experience of the war, he felt himself almost going mad from grief. What saved him, he said, was humour--laughter, lightness; once he learned to laugh at things, he could function again.
Of course, a healthy baby letting out a good cry cannot be compared with the trauma of war. I do understand that. Yet, a baby's cry is so intense, at times, that it can't help but carry with it a reminder of the will to live. And thus, ironically, of death. Perhaps that is why we (the general public, whether parents or not) tend to dislike so much the sound of babies crying. And how can we regulate our reaction to this reminder of death, except, in the long run, to find lightness, even in that?
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