Welcome to the Hood Pt.6. The Shape of Your Heart

​​Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
​Part 4
Part 5

When you become a parent,
(at least, in my experience)
the shape of things change

your heart
grows, expands, pushes out to the edges of your chest
and presses down deep into your stomach,
and
the world
becomes smaller and bigger at the same time

smaller,
​because it is like a lens has zoomed in on this little being you are responsible for:
suddenly rolling and crawling are more significant than world events
a sound that vaguely resembles a word is a linguistic revolution
and ​you can't help but take photos of everything
'look, he's smiling - take a photo'
'look, he's crying - take a photo'
'look, he's pooing - take a photo'
​
when your child is in bed at night,
and you have a small, precious window of time to catch up on being an adult
you just end up looking through all those photos you took
and some crazy part of you wants to go in and wake the boy up
even though sleep is a rare miracle
and so you listen intently to the baby monitor,
soaking up every tiny sigh, yawn, shuffle
always somewhat irrationally wondering, 
does he still remember how to breathe?
​Is he doing it now?
Should I go in and check?

The world has become smaller,

but it has also become bigger

bigger,
because you see everything with fresh child-like eyes
realising it's a big deal that there are so many foods with different flavours and textures
and there's a bloody big ocean out your doorstep and down the road
and a colossal sky above your head that pours out light and rain
and the crunch of leaves in small fingers reminds you that ​this massive world is fascinating at every turn

all its possibilities present themselves afresh
as you look at a life so untarnished
so new to it all
and speculate about the future for this growing soul,
when your own short life has seen change like
Dad's high-tech brick phone with 3 selectable monotone ringtones
now replaced by a galaxy speaking with satellites,
and that old chunky clunky computer you used to play commander keen on
is so many gigabytes and nbns and wifis behind this macbook pro with retina display,
and it was a really big deal when all those towers of CDs
started to fit on an iPod
but now it's old news,
so you wonder
what world will this little man live in
when he contemplates a career
vote for leaders
​tries to find firm foundations for his feet?

and the world is not just
bigger and smaller
when you think about crunching leaves and colossal sky and the textures of foods and your child's future

it is bigger and smaller
when you watch the horrendous story
of a boy, 11 years old
in your modern, first world country
stripped naked, forced down, brutalised
you see the highlight reel of his early adolescence 
complete with tear-gas, 
confined spaces
mechanical chairs
spit hoods

and you immediately see
someone's child,
someone's baby,
someone

and then you see
​your child
your baby
someone

and your brain breaks a bit
trying to consider how these things exist in the same world

and you think again
about those children in detention
that boy on that beach
all those fingerprints, voices, stories,
all those lives
that began with breath in lungs
and eyes wide for the world
and all those ways a life can be mistreated, damaged, stolen

and you wonder
- how you will try to explain it all to your son?
racism and poverty and privilege and affluence
and systems and corruption and human rights and politics
and nations and fear
and opinions and shame

and the enormous, gravity of the task
confronts you
when your heart with its changing shape,
meets the world with its changing shape

everything is zoomed in, 
and zoomed out
smaller
and 
bigger

and all you can do
between your grief for those children 
and your hopes and fears
for the one in your house
is trust that,
​as you navigate together
the crunch of leaves
the textures of foods
the reporting of news
the abuse of lives
the ugly conversations
​the slow wheels of justice
​you will both sit in it,
all of it,
its agony and its art
and find some
​hope
left
in the middle