The Baby Snuggler

Do you see that little woman with the pink bundle in her arms? She’s one of the first people I look for every Sunday morning.

The first time I noticed her she was holding a little boy who was obviously of mixed race parents. I assumed that the young African-American woman sitting beside her was his mother, and she his devoted great-grandmother. I was so impressed with the image of her that morning. Times have changed, but old Southern ladies aren’t always as open-minded as we would hope for them to be.

It wasn’t until the baby boy was gone and the young woman was sitting a few pews away that I realized she wasn’t his mother, but an adoring fan of the elderly woman who had held him. It wasn’t long before I became her fan too.

For 32 years, this tiny woman has loved hundreds of tiny babies. Her arms are their stopping place on their way back to birth mothers or on to adoptive families. Hers is the first voice that sings them to sleep, and the first lips to kiss their tiny brows. She swaddles them and croons to them, and they sigh contentedly into her warmth.

At an age when most women are beyond midnight feedings, she looks forward to them eagerly. The social worker calls and she grins all the way to the hospital because once again there will be a baby in her too quiet house. Boys and girls, black and white, it doesn’t matter to her what they look like, only that they need her today.

The day always comes that she takes her latest love and places them into their mother’s arms. She kisses them good-bye and wishes them well, and cries from the sorrow of leaving them. Then she wipes her eyes, says a prayer for the all babies she’s loved, and waits for the social worker to call her again.