Soft

The same day Noah was born, my husband taught him to stick out his tongue. Gil had read that babies could imitate a few facial expressions as soon as they were born, and that the first motor skill they perfected was tongue-sticking.

Somewhere I have a photo. If Gil did it once, he did it a hundred times. He never tired of this gentle pantomime: cupping the baby’s wobbly head in his two hands, he’d stick out his tongue and wait for the reply. Here it came, and Gil laughed with delight. The baby couldn’t laugh yet, or even understand its sound. But still, there: A sign of understanding, connection, complicity in the tragicomedy we’d invited him to attend.

“He did it! He did it!” Gil found this communication even more awe-inspiring than his ability to make a baby.

Once home — to our astonishment, the nice nurses and stern resident physicians turned us out in 24 hours, when I was certainly in no shape to go home yet, much less to care for a wholly mysterious new human — Gil added to his repertoire, making round wide-eyed Os to see what they elicited, and (more practically) bringing me a cold beer when he brought Noah to me for milk on the hour. “The baby is so…fragile,” he fretted. “What if one of us drops him?”

“What if we don’t,” I countered, hugging Noah close in the little swaddling that Gil had learned to make for him.

“What about his HEAD?!” Gil was wide-eyed. “Did you feel his fontanelle?”

“Please don’t tell me you’re pressing on the baby’s head.”

“I’m not pressing.”

Soft Spots that Heal Themselves

People talk about the fontanelle, singular, when in fact there are six: the mastoid and spheroid, two each; the posterior; and the anterior. This last one is the one that is easiest to perceive. It’s the one we call fontanelle, singular.

Covered with a tough membrane, they’re all there to allow the brain to continue growing. Evolution gave childbearers a dubious gift, in that the baby’s head does not grow quite so much as it might in utero, or we’d be even more banged up after the fact. Once properly on land, the brain has to get going, absorbing all the new energy and learning swiftly, and the skull will not keep up. Hence fontanelles, which close up within a few weeks or months of birth. Little breathers, soft spots to enable the exchange of growth and permanence, places where the ole cranium can catch up more at its leisure.

“I didn’t press it,” Gil insisted. “Though, how could you not just…?” he ran his thumb oh so delicately across his son’s crown when I handed him back, its down of birth hair, shockingly thick and black still, destined to soon fall out. He kissed Noah right on his little anterior soft spot, lips lingering.

We’re born so open, soft and vulnerable. And one hopes, believes, that no matter how the gentle spots get grown over, now matter how hard encased, still they persist in their softness, thrumming alive beneath the veil of bone.

Full of hope and wonder, Gil pressed his lips to his son’s crown, to its softest place, to its place of greatest growth.

This small essay is part of a series I'll be writing on LinkedIn in the coming months, on the theme of "reknitting." The series is a direct result of my work in February as part of Megan Macedo’s Writing Challenge. My aim is to bring together my chosen work as a writer with my observations as a communications professional--out loud! In public! Follow more of my work at Medium.