Lessons Learned From a Bassinet

The bassinet in which I placed my first child was the same one which my mother had used for me.  It was, in fact, the same bassinet that had held my mother and each of her sisters.   Every one of my cousins slept in that bassinet.  Eventually the bassinet was used for my grandchildren.  Not just my grandchildren, but my cousins’ grandchildren also used this same bassinet.  There have been five generations of babies who have used that sturdy, whicker basket.  The legs have been redone by skilled fathers.  The mattress and flowing draped cloth that formed the liner and skirt have been new with each family. 

It has become the pride and honor of each of these mothers, whether members of this family by blood or marriage, to pass this bassinet to the next expectant member of my mother’s family.  The bassinet must have been built with incredible care, and it surely has been treated with equal reverence.  It has also been painted with a rainbow of colors.  I painted it yellow for my girls. It was blue when I received it and green before that.  It was painted pink by the next recipient and then white.  I have seen pictures of it that show colors have been repeated, retained and changed at will.  It has been lavender at least once, and a light melon orange as well.  Pink and white were the most frequent colors because the force for girls is strong in my family.  Who knows what the next color will be?   But we do know where the bassinet is right now, and we know it quietly waits for the next precious baby it will hold.

There is a lesson to be learned here.  While every family who used this bassinet loved it, they all wanted it changed in some important way.  New colors, new liners, new skirts.  But not a single person thought that it would be a good idea to break the bassinet apart and replace it with something entirely different.  It was never considered that they would burn the old whicker and replace it with plastic.  If it was stained, you cleaned it.  If the casters were broken you replaced them.  If the legs were getting loose and fractured with stress they were rebuilt.  If the color was not the one you wanted for your baby you added another coat of paint to the ever-thickening layers. 

If you love something, if you see how it has served you for generations, if you recognize the value of an object you don’t destroy it because there is one thing that now creates a problem.  Things can be improved without being destroyed.

It is obvious that this administration is incapable of imagining any vehicle that holds the collected hopes and dreams of entire families.  They do not see important institutions as worthy of small-course corrections.  They do not want to fix what they see is wrong, they want to destroy all and rebuild in some configuration that they alone foresee.  It is not efficiency that they want, it is control.  It is not betterment that they seek, it is retribution for wrongs that only they can perceive.  It is not clarity and truth that they pursue, it is obfuscation and confusion.  To what end?  Only cockroaches thrive on carnage. 

Some lessons in economics are heavy with mathematics; lessons in science are steeped in variables, controls and independent review; lessons in history must be parsed and overlain with geography, culture, and biology.  But lessons in simple humanity, the care of a parent for a child, empathy for the young, the old, the ill, all those lessons can be learned around a family bassinet.  How could so many of our Republican legislators have failed the test of compassion? 

Try to extend hope to a stranger, it will help you keep the faith.