Belonging

Sometimes, when the baby falls asleep, a great tenderness overwhelms me. It's as if all the day's caterwauling and carrying-on collapses down into one truth: this is my little son, and his precious life is my main responsibility.

The baby feels something for me in return. I don't think you could call it love--it's something more primal. There is an element of need involved: the baby experiences a non-negotiable requirement for maternal attention, maternal sustenance, maternal babywearing. And there is an element of "Belonging."

It took years of practice, and years of falling in love-or-something-like-it for me to finally identify Belonging as a force. Beyond the interpersonal reward of being seen and understood, deeper than the sensory pleasures that accompany affection between humans, is a fundamental desire to Belong.

The strength of the urge to Belong is what keeps us in situations that have long since ceased to be rewarding. It's not an obvious mental construct; it goes beyond saying to yourself, "These are my people. Therefore I will stay here." It is a feeling that you are part of something that also includes other beings.

So beyond any notion of what it means to "be a family," there is the unavoidable fact of our Belonging. The baby does not do tenderness yet, or compassion, or anything generally recognized as "love." But he does Belong, with a passion and a wildness, as if his survival depended on it.

Which I suppose it does.