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Dealing with Babies
Dedicated to my oldest granddaughter and first of my great grandchildren.
 How do you make a baby?
How do you make a baby to fit into the world?
Or can you?
You see I’m big on the topic because my oldest grandchild, no longer a child, but a great woman, is having her first baby, a girl, using my name and that of my mother’s. It’s like basketball. We are all trying to have good health and delight into the basket, even though LeBron James or Stephen Curry or even Serena Williams are not at all interested in the new Audrey on the earth. At least not now. But there is so much to learn on this earth.
How do you make a baby that is on the right road, loves the right folk, can make it through school or sports or just about anything - rich or poor- an active brain, a precious smile, and maybe everyone will embrace him or her in order to have a super chance in life. I would applaud for African blood to make the line full of creativity and genius in sports.
For sure, it takes a major job to produce a baby. You’ve heard that song "Rockabye Baby." It’s not just pulling them out, embracing them, wrapping them in some sort of warmth to start the baby talk. And that can be the beginning of creation of that child. Gee, there are amazing books written by famous people for every step of the way to becoming an adult. When I was a baby, back in the early 1940s - actually born 1939 - about all we had was Pat the Bunny.
It takes a few days to even be able to consider the leche (milk) the mother will produce. Some girls don’t like to deal with the issue, the starting pain, the inconvenient of stopping everything to sit down and give the baby his or her nourishment, sometimes a bunch, sometimes not so much. Depends on one’s habits. Some entering into Motherhood just don’t like what it takes to stop and focus on the child as the child learns to use the breast like all animals do. I loved feeding my children straight from the breast. It was real and reasonable. And it made motherhood a heck of a lot easier because one didn’t have to fool with bottles, etc.
A lot of moms are a bit wary of nursing a baby, maybe it won’t be healthy, and it might mess up one’s breast. I nursed my son up to two years. It is convenient somehow and I had healthy children. It’s really just understanding and preparing for life, for a newly birthed child who will not only depend on the moms and dads to show them the way of life, but that they will have opportunities to discover for themselves what is life, their lives, their creative clinging to the life they love or hate or want to enjoy. Once one has just about overkilled on leche or milk and having learned to drink from Mom or a bottle, things change. Fresh orange juice is a must.
My father’s skill was learning to hold the baby wrapped in blanket or some fancy outfit, to get that bottle into the baby’s domain and teaching him or her the joy of what is in those bottles. Never was Dad an alcohol drinker, none of us were. That could be a good or a bad. Will orange juice over run chocolate milk? Will alcohol become the peace that knows little standing but sure does help Dads to do the things, the jobs, each is required to do? Until that day when dad can get out that thing called a baseball bat or a tennis racket or a basketball, sigh - life begins for the guys. There is no more white stuff (milk) all the time. There are fresh fruit juices and water and all kinds of slipping and sliding that makes It depends on how eager the mother is having this amazing thing called a human that is all yours. Music is the soul’s awakening, like Roberta Flack, Mahalia Jackson, etc., these can help babies enjoy a nursing, or an effort to crawl or walk. That also includes Diana Ross, Ella Fitzgerald, Beyonce Whitney, and Tina Turner all singing rock’n’ roll active songs. Even Elvis or the Beatles or good old blues music or the great classics much less those songs for children that teach them to understand stories.
There is a lot of falderals leading up to having a baby - is it legit? is it a miracle? Is it a hope for the future? Is it an error that has turned into something fantastic? Now a days, it doesn’t seem to matter if people have babies without getting married. The new chant is to have a child before one gets married. Then, I wonder, who put up the sign that it’s fun and worth the wait and the twists and shouts and all the things a mom must go through or learn as they prep for their birth event, just like any basketball player or tennis competitor, or swim coach who has to be prepared sufficiently that they can smile on their face as victory reaches its arm around their first steps in life, and those that continue on and on as children discover what is life.
As they pass the one-year-old, that’s when parents get antsy - did they prefer purple colors or could they see any color or did they like to eat jarred baby food, or just plain mom’s milk, and then what about who the child looks like. There are arguments over these and at some point, there is the formal photograph of family - while the older kids are racing around trying to get the dog or wanting to play pitch or pinch flowers from the mom’s yard. Most everyone reads books. And today there are so many outstanding books written by people of every color who are great authors - and there is humor packed into stories because that makes one laugh. And young kids even take on golf, a healthy way of getting walks in, and/or riding bucking broncos be they horse or bull, and just about every kind of sport appears in competitions from the Olympics to weekend TV programs when the football teams spread across everything in the US.
Children today are climbing boulders and rocks of life that most of us never even saw and are now having to do that just to hold together their families, and their brothers and sisters who actually are leading success in the wars all over the world. Is War the next heaven? Please God, I hope we got that mixed up. Heaven is when we want to push together all kinds of kids no matter faith, nation, color, background etc., but they are the ones this world is ready for; they are the ones who can twist the globe and make survival the top thing and the flooding lakes or erupting Peruvian or a mess of disasters and things that are redesigning this big planet. If you haven’t been to the Easter Island, it’s time to go to this volcanic island in Polynesia - 5 hours by plane. There you see in awe 900 monumental statues called Moal, Rapa Nui - the Moai were probably carved to commemorate important ancestors and were made from around 1000 CE until the second half of the 17th century.
When I was young, black basketball players were very few and were treated horrifically which just broke and breaks my heart to learned that. If it hadn’t been for Rosie, Dad’s cook, and Miss Sue, a white nurse, both of whom babysat my brother and me in the early days. I grew up on Ray Charles, Earl Lord (first in NBA) Jackie Robinson, Pele, Wilma Rudolph, Jack Johnson, Arthur Ash Willie O’Ree (National Hockey League,) Grant Fuhr first Stanley Cups goal tender, first black member of the hockey Hall of Fame. Then there was FRITZ POLLARD an African America head coach in NFL, playing and coaching before 1926. Michael Jordan was the 1st black NBS star to negotiate a mega endorsement deal, and waiting in line were my favorite, Charles Barkley, and Althea Gibson, Jesse Owens in Olympics defying all comers in a difficult political time. In those days of war, these brought us the power of the job, the competition, the laughter, the sass, the fun that draws us to giant arenas many nights to see their fight to the finish. Gosh. Shooting baskets were so extraordinary that they look like fat bombs. Who would not give a lifetime to see LeBron James. He was always one of my favorites, who I was able to chat with him briefly while in Memphis, He was a generous man even then, giving victory with one after the other. And finally, He returned to his bread-and-butter place in Cleveland.
My task from almost birth was to be a good horsewoman like my mother. I could have been a cowgirl and a tennis player and one who loved basketball much better than anything else in my life. Such was life. And I had the honor of presenting my granddaughter to LeBron who was friends of Mike Miller who set it up and my other favorite play has always been, Kyrie who was a hoot, so much fun to be with and we went to a pair of parties which Miller had given when they were in town. But I also support Tony Armstrong, the announce and other players who had moved on up the latter to be announcers and perpetrators of what was going on.
Now how does this all squeak together? I think it is the better we are tweaked together; the better information is going to be. I love the daytime shows of two men and two women - who make pro basketball more interesting than, for me, baseball or golf. Maybe kids who are tossing in that ball as a sideline, on those cold winter nights, or just trying to flip that hand to make sure the ball goes in the net - maybe they have a chance someday. You watch movies about how tough it is for kids to be “chosen” - terribly hard. And how can we pick out those “chosen” though maybe not as spectacular as others, so they too can have chances to be superstar players.
Like in the Olympics. A young African American man I helped years back. He worked together in prisons, after getting in a small bit of trouble as a high school senior. But troubles can slice in half the promises one had obtained. But he did get to play ball in a popular college. And then one day knocked on my door. We knew God had thrown us together the first time, and he with two friends had an idea of how to work with prisoners in 201 Poplar Pod for youth 18-21. By golly, it was a huge success. Cross Fit began to make a difference. Until of course the Coronavirus. Everything got canned at that point. But Joc never stopped. He became a superstar American football player in Brazil then in Germany, He was always outstanding - with a fit very few could maintain over a period of celebrate years. He has two babies now which make him proud. And I’ m sure Joc’s son will follow in his dad’s footsteps - even speaking foreign languages. That is so wise.
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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