(today's word is BELLY BUTTON)
On soft little toddler bellies,
poking out over their diapers as they bobble across the room, they’re cute.
On the bronze colored skin of an
Indian dancer, ripe with flesh, caught there in the middle of elegant curves,
where strands of jangles sing to the rhythm of the dance, they are mesmerizing.
On the oversized trunk of the dark
furry middle-aged mister whose swimming suit should not be worn in public, it can be
disturbing.
Buttons on the belly.
Tomorrow our Ashley will leave her
home with a small suitcase. She’ll strap
herself, in the dark hours of the morning, into a seat belt and my son John will
start the car and drive her to the hospital. There they will impose labor on her
until our little boy pushes himself, with his mama’s powerful help, out into
the light of our world. The magic strand,
that nourished him to this point, will yield to the clamp and the clip and
soon, with the gasp of air previously unknown to him, our new little fella will
be on his own. We will carefully diaper
and bathe him until the clamp dries out and falls off and then, like every
other human who ever lived, he will have his very own - his uniquely detailed
inny or outie of a belly button.
As a matter of scientific fact, the
belly button is a scar. There in the
center of our being. A daily reminder
that we were once connected to a power source, a being, without whom we could
not exist. Whether or not she cared for us a single moment after birth, the
source of our very first nurture and nourishment remains with us through that
scar.
I bathe my Annie’s baby Beth and
watch the water form a tiny pool in her navel.
I ponder as she sits in the nook of my elbow that this is the place
where she was connected to her mother, who has a scar where she was connected
to me. And when I cleanse my own skin I
see the place where I was connected to my mother. And on and on it goes, a series of dots and
dashes going back in time, connecting me to people I do not know yet, or at
least do not recall.
I bow my head, in reverence, to
speak with my Heavenly Father, my first life source. I close my eyes in an attempt to shut out the
world while we talk. But if I let my
eyes peek open, my head bowed, they are focused right there -right in the middle of my belly, under my
heart and my lungs. There, my eyes tell
me… there is the scar. That scar my
mother gave me at birth. Evidence that I
am hers. And a holy reminder that I am
also His.
By birth to Him. And by grace to His Son, to whom scars are so familiar.
