Life in the midst of darkness

On this day, an extraordinarily normal thing happened to an extraordinary ordinary family during anything-but-normal times: A child was born to a NYC couple, the woman, age 29, the father, 30. This girl-child greeted her teacher-mother and first-year med-school dad soon after lunch time, weighing in at 9 pounds, 3 ounces, 23 inches long. Mother and child are both doing fine as her masked-donned Papa cradles his daughter for the first time. Extended family are looped into the blessed event via the wonder of texting, phone calls and digitally remote conversations. As the sun–on-cue–pulls back the curtain clouds on the first Sunday of Spring, tears of joy are shed and God is profusely thanked.

Nothing will ever be the same.

Not the park.

Not the grocery store.

Not the long subway trek to work.

Life transformed into a translucent elixir of milk and honey.

Today there will be no talk of calamity because one thing is more certain and predictable than gloom and doom news: A new life, my granddaughter Millie, was born and from this day forth she will be loved forever. And with that love she, too, will become a giver of love, bearing the torch lit long ago by parents of parents, from East to West.

This is how it works.

Love.

Nothing else matters.