Little Wonder

by J. B. Chow

I was crouched down on my haunches so I could be at eye level with him, him being my Buddha-bellied little four-and-a-half-month-old nephew. He was strapped into the infant carrier waiting patiently by the side of the car for his mom, who was setting the house alarm, to buckle him into the child car seat.

As I was making faces to try to make him laugh, my eyes welled with tears and there was a heavy lump in my throat. I was flying home the next day and I was already feeling the pain of how much I would miss him. The thought of not being able to see him on a daily basis, or with any kind of regularity, saddened me.

With his vice-like grip on my finger and his gurgling smile, I wanted so badly to say, "I love you" or anything at all, but I couldn't speak. There was a funny feeling in my throat that was cutting off my abilities to make a sound, let alone utter any words. I knew that if I tried to talk, I would start to cry.

Breaking into tears in front of my nephew was something I didn't want to do. While he may be too young to understand why I was crying, he would be able to sense the sadness and I wanted to hide it from him. I also didn't want my sister to see because then she would start crying as well. With another day and a half left of my visit, I wanted the remaining time to be cheerful and upbeat, not marred by any tearful hysterics.

It was while I was desperately blinking away the tears and trying to swallow the lump in my throat--before my sister came out of the house--that I realized just how much I loved my nephew. Fully. Completely. Unconditionally. These were unfamiliar emotions that I was experiencing and I have no idea when or where they came from. I have always thought these kinds of feelings existed only for your own children but now here I was, a twirl of loving emotion for this sixteen-pound mass of joy that I had met only a mere week ago.

During my visit, not once did I feel the need to get away for some alone time. In the past, when I've spent too much time with another person, I would eventually feel the urge to put some distance between us. But with my nephew it was very much the opposite. I wanted to spend as much time with him as I could.

With the days dwindling, I would try to imprint moments with my nephew into my memory. I loved how he would turn his head this way and that way to take in his surroundings, laughed at how half the food would come back out of his mouth when he was being fed, and was empathetic to his frustrations when fatigue overtook his little body, causing him to sway and rub his eyes with his little fists.

My visit is over now and I'm back home but when I get emailed photos of my nephew, I look at him with different eyes now. Whereas before he was this cute little baby who was related to me, and whom I loved because he is a relation, he is now this cute little baby whom I love because he is who he is.