spazio insieme

'Space Together' for you anglophones. Today was our first day at Spazio Insieme or Mommy and Me. So exciting. Since we visited on Tuesday I have thought all week about how I'd meet other moms and possibly make some acquaintances or dare I say, friends; and how Eva would take the opportunity to wow everyone and blossom before their eyes: getting up on her own two little feet to run around and make soliloquies in English. Oh the possibilities!

We arrived promptly at 9:30 with two other mother and baby couples (two boys both with big blue eyes: this was the largest concentration of babies with blue eyes I had seen in Rome since Eva came into the world). They knew each other and so didn't really take much notice of Eva and I except to make space for us on the changing table. I took Eva's coat off and put hospital booties on my shoes and we went in to the babies' world: a large hexagonal room with huge windows and everything a baby could possibly dream of playing with: noisemakers, balls, bright shiny sparkly things, things to climb on, in and slide down. I wanted to take it all home.

For a while Eva and I played by ourselves in the 'sezione piccoli' filled with pillows and other soft stuff to break the fall of a sitting baby. The room started to fill up with parents and babies over the next half hour and soon,to her delight, there were bigger kids crawling around Eva. She squealed and yelled with delight at all the new things around her and I spoke softly to her in English so she wouldn't forget that she is learning two languages. As the grazing not-yet-toddlers passed and Eva grew more comfortable with her surroundings she dared to touch them. Like ships passing in the night though they barely noticed her or stopped only momentarily to glance at the stationary being and then continued on their respective ways; even if they didn't know where they were going or from where they had come.

As for me, I could have squealed too as I watched Eva. Her quiet observant way of always initially taking measure of her surroundings, gave way to smiles at other Moms and making physical contact with other babies. Amazing.

The human experience is rich in so many minuscule little ways, that eventually add up to big impacts: the invention of the steam engine, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand etc. I fell in love with Eva's father five years ago and it felt like I was the first person on the planet to feel that way. When I got pregnant, Max and I were the first couple in the world to feel the joy and excitement of it; and now that Eva is in our world, I am the first Mom to feel so filled with joy, love, pride and optimism. These small, little things are events that define one lifetime but they are merely the stuff that makes the world go round. My realist side has to stop and remind me on occasion that my experience is not singular or unique, that millions of others are traveling through lives marked with the same events. The idealist in me, of course, hopes that this fact doesn't devalue each separate event in each of those lives, including mine.