Will My Child Teach Me Secrets of Life?

“Listen to this,” said my friend Nancy, calling from Michigan. “It’s the greatest story!”

And was it ever, one that went straight to the heart of a mother-to-be.

It concerned a couple known by a friend of a friend of Nancy’s. The couple had just become parents for the second time, and shortly after they brought their new addition home from the hospital, their first child, a 3-year-old, began making a curious demand.

“I really need to talk to the baby,” said the firstborn. “I need to talk to the baby alone.”

The parents were reluctant to leave the kids by themselves, but the child persisted, and after some months, they relented.

They left the children in the baby’s room and turned on the baby monitor before they walked out. Then they waited.

After a moment, the toddler spoke:

“Hurry up and tell me what God looks like,” he whispered urgently to the baby. “I’m starting to forget.”

I love this story because it is magical and modern. It speaks to our deepest spiritual yearnings, yet has the prosaic touch of technology.

Most of all, it reminds us that children are teachers of the highest order.

My first child is due in two weeks, and as I watch the lumps and ripples of her elbows and feet under the stretched skin of my middle, I wonder about the secrets she will impart.

Will she teach me the patience that so eludes me in other areas of my life? Will she teach me my limits as I try to balance the responsibilities of work and family?

Will I learn from her something new about love?

In the last weeks, my emotional pendulum has swung between anticipation and anxiety as childbirth--an event that for months seemed theoretical--could happen at any time.

The last stages of pregnancy are a particularly self-involved time, yet the way people react to my shape tells me I’m part of something that is socially profound. The world opens its arms to the very pregnant, the way it does to the very tiny. Personal boundaries, which we normally spend so much time protecting, become blurry or just disappear. The pregnant belly in its last stages is a magnet.

Last week, I stood at the mechanic’s waiting for my car, while his office manager rubbed my belly as though it were a talisman. As she rubbed, she told me all about her children--who was a surprise, who was planned, who was easy to deliver. And I loved it.

Many women express outrage that their body space is so carelessly violated when they are pregnant, but so far, I haven’t felt that way at all. Already, this unborn child has taught me that we are part of a joyful, communal experience. She has taught me that we belong to something much bigger than us.

“I just heard a wonderful story about some friends of friends,” said my mother, calling from Hollywood last week.

It concerned a couple who had just become parents for the second time. . . .

“Mom,” I interrupted, “I told you that story months ago!”

“You did not!” she insisted. “I just heard it from my friend. I would have remembered a story like that!”

I was on the verge of humoring my mother while secretly questioning her sanity, when I realized it was likely we had indeed heard the story about the toddler and the baby from different people.

It’s probably another urban legend, one of those amazing stories that always happens to a friend of a friend.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter if it’s true. It’s still a lovely story, and one that always raises goose bumps in the telling. I hope to be able to tell it to my daughter one day.

After all, I don’t know what God is. And I surely don’t know what he or she looks like.

But I’d like to believe that a child may hold the answer.

Robin Abcarian will be on maternity leave until January.