Sadly, we hear of bombings every day, usually in far away places. Today one terrified many people in Boston. When stories like this come close to home, we begin to relate to the panic and fear that violence creates. Hopefully, we feel more human in our need to connect with people and find the goodness in each other, even in the midst of such terrible acts. This is a story of a bombing that happened in Chiang Mai during World War II. Many years later, my Aunty learned that she was born just before this bombing and that in the confusion, her birth certificate was not recorded until much later. No one could remember her true birthdate. The one she has is just a good guess. Even more significant than losing track of her birthdate, was her family losing track of her, a newborn baby, in the panic on the day of the bombing. This story is how I imagine that day, the blessings to be found in it, and the things we can count on even when the world seems to be falling apart.
Imagine this, now, in your comfortable life:
A family preparing for a faraway war
to come crashing into theirs.
They did not want this stone of fear.
Preparation comforts some:
an underground shelter, food, a plan.
But when the rumbling came anyway,
imagine the panic. Scurrying
underground, taking meaningless
things, forgetting the important.
Among them, a baby, newborn, nameless.
When the mother had gathered all
the children underground, and then
realized what she had left,
she turned. The ground shook
and children cried. Imagine
the choice – when have you
had to make such a choice?
When it grew quiet, they all emerged
into air and light –
these things were still theirs,
and the baby, too, alive. But
what she had seen above, they
had all missed in their dark hole –
that though the ground shook,
her small view of the sky remained the same,
that from where she lay, the
sky stayed true. Imagine, then,
the square of sky the baby girl watched.
It, more than anything, you can.
Amphibious 