Baby Mine

“Baby mine, don't you cry. Baby mine dry your eyes. Rest your head close to my heart,
Never to part, baby of mine. Little one, when you play, Pay no heed what they say.
Let your eyes sparkle and shine, Never a tear, baby of mine. (“Baby Mine”/Ned Washington)

The song was written for the original Disney movie, sung by Dumbo the Elephant’s mother to the soon to be orphaned Dumbo. The song then made its reemergence in the movie Beaches, as Bette Midler sang the song to yet another child soon to be facing loss and anxiety.

Provincetown has changed and has become even more inclusive, and almost a nonchalant mecca for the various demographics, lifestyle choices via nature and nurture, and a place where finding the common is all about just breathing in with delight and exhaling with pure joy. And yesterday, on a gloomy overcast day, with raindrops hitting certain targets in splat and splatter, with people running for shelter, I encountered, once again the magic of a town at the edge of the world, but almost actually the heart of the world.

I was walking toward the street, exiting from a covered Shopping Pier, when a woman was standing just under an awning, with her baby in a carriage. Not enough rain to get the infant wet, but at least a dozen doting passerby’s hoping to help keep the innocent cherub-faced dumpling looking child dry. Cooing, and kisses, ahh’s and ooh’s in the dozens. The baby smiled, giggled her mother a bit modest thanked everyone, but her lips widened into a smile. This baby was adored and cherished. Even I had to add to the commentary with the words “Shana Punim”, a beautiful face, a Yiddish phrase.

And then it hit me, a whack on the side of the head that my friend Gayle, from Houston, used to say when the obvious was right in front of your face…the innocence of a baby, protected, loved, cared for by the village, surrounded with all that makes human nurturing an amazing part of Nature, or if you admire, a Greater Power, God! And my heart sank…AND then, my phone beeped with a few articles from Huff Post, the NY Times, and Politico…there were more stories regarding the victims of the hate crimes and murders which included not only innocent adults but the helpless children. Stories regarding the Trump Concentration Camp have dividing families, murdering some infants, losing many familiar connections, and kidnapping some hoping to place them for adoption, to gain profit.  

But Congress is in session, blaming #Moscow Mitch, and pretending that decorum and some ancient policy of Senate respect and rules must be adhered to…Nancy Pelosi remains silent in calling in her section of Congress…Trump thinks his teleprompter speech vindicates all of his hateful rhetoric. The GOP’s latest scapegoat is Video Games…and the age of innocence has forever been rotted, ruined, and ignored. How many babies in the years of Trump have lost the chance to be loved, unconditionally, and how many more babies have been discarded by a village raped and pillaged by the Evangelical Taliban and the Republican Oligarchs. I had to turn back to the mom and the baby who had possibly been loved a trillion times over and pray to my God, adding thank you, for the love this ONE child has received!