A young woman gave birth alone
Strangers surround her, hold you first
In the bright glare of a sterile room
One room
In a large hospital
In a populous country
In a huge world.
Yet fireworks lit the skies all over the world the night you were born
There were prayer vigils and champagne and parties to end all parties.
All the hospital staff know and remember you, Happy Jade, jewel of the future;
First baby born at that hospital in the New Millennium.
A Korean friend remembers a news story about the first New Year baby–
Was it you?
I don’t think so.
The situation in that little room did not call for public celebration in society’s eyes
But with his marvelous sense of humor, God had the whole world doing fireworks for you
And your birthday is a national holiday every year—in both your countries, birth and adopted.
I was thinking about babies on the night you were born
Nursing my older baby, almost two years old,
Wondering if he was nursing for the last time,
Thinking about the new sibling he soon would have.
I sat in semi-darkness
A peaceful silence that the occasional firecracker could not disturb
As the still night became the new day, a day which already was across
the ocean, across the Date Line
A morning where you were tended by loving hands reaching into your incubator
As you continued growing in a bright new world
I would not know about you for another five months
I would not see you until the very last month of that new year
But I felt the stillness inside me,
One babe drawing strength suckling at my breast–
I was fully in the moment with him,
But somehow my thoughts were across the ocean and in the future as well,
Wishing strength to another babe, one others must tend on behalf of me for now
My strength drew strength from thoughts of you,
The babe destined to span centuries and continents as my thoughts spanned the ocean.