Enter life  6.3.11

The singleton entered the extrauterine sphere on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. She was coloured purple, exhausting awe-inspiring screams with all of her body tensed, her arms raised, moving and shaking wildly and her fingers crampily stretched. After half a minute or so, she quickly quieted down, ignored the blood, slime and what else her body was covered with, relaxed. She began to exertedly glance through the narrow cracks between her eye lids, aiming at grasping the situation and considering her options. Geworfenheit, thrownness, is Heidegger’s term to describe what every human being faces: “There you are, you haven’t been asked, no idea what ‘you’ is, let alone who you are and what ‘there’ is.” Naturally, she quickly went screaming again, coming up with all the strength shrouded in that 4,4 kg and 57 cm body. Positioning her on her mother’s upper part immediately freed her from those unsolvable existentialist contemplations and made her swing into the flow of life.

Some thirty six hours later her skin was overwhelmed with the influx of new hormons, as usual for babies her age. Other than in some thirteen years’ time, she didn’t care about it. Her priorities were different. We were sitting in our bed. She was lying on my legs, her head on my flexed knees, her feet pressing against my underbelly. It was around 4 a.m. She was gazing at us with her steel-blue eyes. For long minutes. Endlessly. Constantly and without interruption. Highly awake. Evaluating her situation. Facing her parents with a piercing glance as if she was pondering the trustworthiness of those whose reproductive instincts have brought her into that situation. Hopefully future will tell that she had not erred when she quietly fell asleep in that night after the first day after her birth.