just a baby
thinking about love, and all the people I feel (and have felt) it for
I know that I love someone when I wish I could have held them as a baby.
My mother was a baby once, just like everyone else.
A month or two ago, she and I were having one of those mother-daughter heart-to-hearts about her childhood, and it ended with her recalling an anecdote that she knew she had photo evidence for. For a while, we just sat there, flipping through the albums and rummaging through boxes she’d gotten to keep of photos of her as a little girl.
The weird thing about going through family photo albums is that you always think you’ve seen every photo, but each time you go through them again, for some reason, there’s always one or two pictures you’ve never seen. They seem to spawn out of nowhere or somehow magically grow inside of the books during the time that elapsed between now and the last time you opened them. Or you actually have seen them before, and you just forgot.
I thought I had seen every photo of my mother there was to exist. But that day, I came across one that I had somehow missed. It made my heart ache in a way that was sad and warm at the same time. It was bittersweet.
I have only ever known this person as my mother. I will never get the chance to know her as anything else outside of that. There is an entire existence, a whole person, that I will never get to meet, because I am limited in my position as her daughter. The woman who eventually became my mother had a life before me, and that life is something I can only imagine, piece together from stories, or see, in the form of worn, sometimes slightly water-damaged photographs.
Still, there was that ever-persistent pang in my chest that I felt as I looked at those photos. I found myself considering all of the memories she’d shared with me about her youth, both good and bad, and now having a distinct face to pair with those stories, because she was staring right at me. I had always known things hadn’t been easy for her growing up, but the reality of my mother’s childhood hit me so much harder when I had actual evidence in my hands of how she looked as it happened. She was just a baby.
When I’ve only ever known someone as a person past their childhood, it’s easy to forget they weren’t always this big; that they were once a vulnerable child who longed for one thing, and one thing only—love.
And at that age, they weren’t even consciously aware that it was something that they wanted. They didn’t even know it was called love—it was just something that was primal and instinctive for them to feel: I really want this thing. And if I don’t get it, I’m going to be really, really sad.
I experience this feeling of longing toward wishing I could hold people as babies, for every single person I love, or have loved in the past, except my siblings. This sounds really mean, but I promise it isn’t. I have three of them: a brother and two sisters. Because I am the oldest, I have actually had the experience of holding each of them as babies. I know exactly the kind of babies each of them were. I don’t have to wish to have known them back then, because I did.
I remember talking about something along the lines of this with one of my closest friends, who is also an eldest sister. She’d said: I feel like it’s so bizarre to think from our siblings’ perspectives. Because we’ve known every single moment of their lives, but we’ve always existed for them.
The fact that as the eldest, I have been present for every single milestone, every single significant event in my siblings’ lives, is a strange realization. From their first words to their first steps, from their first day of school to their graduation—I’ve somehow been there for it all. My memories including them are filled with montages of them growing up, flashing images on a film reel from their babyhood to the present—a privilege that they do not and cannot share in the same way toward me. Maybe it’s similar to how my mom feels about me. At least, to a certain extent.
Yet, they have always known me as their oldest sibling; someone who has been there from the very beginning. My youngest sister, eight years my junior, told me once: I don’t remember discovering Taylor Swift or figuring out who she was. I think that I was just born already knowing who she was because of you.
I have witnessed them grow and change, while to them, I have always been who I am. My younger siblings are all well into their teenage years now (the oldest of them, my brother, turning twenty later this year), and I find myself wishing I could hold their baby selves every now and then. Especially my baby sister, who is going to be fifteen in June. (I don’t want to talk about it.)
But when I think of the possibility of any baby—especially the people I love when they were babies—not having love fulfilled in any capacity, my heart aches for the ability to reach back into time and take care of them the way they deserved to be. Not in a weird, imposing-motherhood-upon-myself-because-I’m-a-woman kind of way, but in a way that communicates the sentiment of I wish I could have done something. It bewilders me, the carelessness and contempt a parent could feel toward their own child at any age, much less infancy. The baby does not know anything at all. They definitely won’t know why their parent is angry.
I love kids. I have been volunteering and working in childcare settings on-and-off since I was as young as twelve, and I’ve been an oldest sibling since I was three, so it’s safe to say I’ve been surrounded by and have cared for a lot of children in my life. While their ages spanned from infancy to high school, a large percentage of them have been four and under. I’m pretty skilled in the art of getting them to stop crying, making them laugh, keeping their attention, and holding conversations with them (when they reach an age where they can verbally communicate, of course, although I’ve dabbled in baby-gibberish here and there).
My co-workers at daycare (all experienced mothers, and much older and wiser than I am), have even jokingly called me “The Baby Whisperer” in the past. I don’t know if they only said it to flatter me and to encourage the work I was doing, nonetheless, it was a compliment and achievement in my book to be regarded as such.
I’m not a mother, and I’m not going to pretend I know how it feels to be one. I won’t claim that experience, because I personally have yet to, if ever. But I’ve spent a good fraction of my life taking care of kids one way or another, so I’d like to think I know a thing or two when it comes to reading babies and their needs.
Every single person you know was a baby once. The ones you love, and even the ones you’ve grown to hate. The fact that the people who hurt you were babies once doesn’t automatically erase any damage—in fact, it doesn’t at all—but I’ve found that it helps to soften the disdainful image of them in your mind, and not dwell on the hurt for so long. At least, it’s helped me.
I can never know for sure, until someone finally figures out time travel (it’s 2024, seriously), but perhaps something occurred during early development, and sometimes, the person who was supposed to take care of them did not necessarily do a great job of it—maybe even at all. It might have caused them to form severe attachment issues, and to project this lack onto the people they form close bonds with later on in life, and push them away in ways that cause nothing but hurt on both ends. And that could be a possible explanation for why they treated you the way they did. It doesn’t make any of it okay, but it helps to consider the origins of certain behaviors.
You might think that your situation with them was an isolated issue, and that it ended as a result of problems that only existed in the present, and this might be half-true. But they are just a baby, looking for love. Love they were deprived of all those years ago. It’s a lifelong quest they don’t even know they’re on.
Of course, some people have extreme situations, but for your typical, painful falling outs and breakups, this perspective has helped me to try and make sense of the loves in my life that have fallen apart. It helps shift the image of them as a villain to one of a damaged person, unknowingly longing for the love they didn’t receive as a baby. It’s a longing that never truly goes away, no matter how calloused someone can get, or how hard they try to bury it beneath layers of anger, resentment, or indifference.
A baby does not have to be taught to yearn for love. They are brought into the world with an innocent desire and need for it. Their entire world is centered around the love and attention of those who care for them, from the very start.
The simple acts of love that a baby experiences are the building blocks upon which their concepts of love and trust are created. And as they get older, they continue to seek out love in all its forms.
In the end, isn’t that just what all of us are doing? Looking for love?
This was beautiful! Made me stare at the ceiling for a long minute🥺
Hmm.. felt this one faith. It brought a particular falling out to mind. I remember cancelling the person in my mind and then one day, I saw a childhood picture of when this person was under 10. So innocent and cute.
I remember thinking.. "hmm, she may have lied to me, but if she's this child, then there's a whole lot of life behind her that could be affecting how she acts and handles things".