Earlier this afternoon, Jude asked me to load a few baby things into her Honda Pilot - baby things we're giving to a young lady at St. Patrick (our church) who has a baby on the way. My heart skipped a beat, though, when I saw what she was giving away - the "boppy pillow" and the blue newborn infant bath tub (it fits in the sink for bath time with newborns). Damn, I thought, overwhelmed with feelings of nostalgia at the thought of giving those things away.
How many times did I sit in our den, watching television, as Jude breast fed J.P. or Joey on the "boppy pillow?" Too many to count. For me, the "boppy pillow" represents simplicity and bliss. In my lifetime, I don't thing anything has seemed so natural, so right, so perfect and pure as Jude breast feeding one of our boys on the "boppy pillow."
It's the same with the newborn infant bath tub. Giving the boys baths (when they were infants, anyway), has always been Jude's thing. When J.P. and Joey were so small - too small for the regular bath tub - she put the infant bath tub in the ugly yellow sink in our kitchen and bathed them. J.P. hated it and Joey was okay with it. Many, many nights, after dinner and before bed, I watched in admiration as Jude expertly bathed one of our boys, then quickly dried him off and put a diaper and pajamas on him.
And tomorrow the "boppy pillow" and the newborn infant bath tub will be gone. Why? Because our boys are growing up so fast and, at our age, there aren't going to be anymore babies to breast feed and bathe. As always, time passes. It's the one constant - the passage of time.
There is love - so much pure love - in the "boppy pillow" and the newborn infant bath tub we're passing along to a fellow parishioner tomorrow. I hope they make her as happy as they have made me.
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