VOICES Radio Hour is brought to you by VOICES in partnership with KDNK, The Sopris Sun and the Connection is Medicine Foundation. With each episode we share stories from members of our community. We hope this serves to preserve an oral history of who we are, where we come from and who we aspire to be, through the tradition of storytelling. 

This story is an excerpt from the episode of VOICES Radio Hour called “Simple Gifts.” It’s about the treasures in life that reveal themselves to us when we take the time to look for them, a gift from the universe that lit up your world in the least expected ways. The storytellers for this episode are Caitlin Causey, Shannon Ewing and Raleigh Burleigh, moderated by Mitzi Rapkin. Catch the debut on KDNK at 6pm, Sunday, March 22.

“Mom, would you rather eat worms or roaches?”

We’re in our truck, driving home from a hike, and my kids are playing “Would You Rather…?” You know, the classic road trip game where everyone takes turns choosing between two equally horrible — or wonderful, or impossible — things. “Would you rather eat ice cream forever or pizza forever?” “Would you rather be able to fly or be invisible?” You get the picture.

But, after a few rounds they really catch me off guard. My daughter asks, “Would you rather be able to relive something from the past or be able to see the future?”

Hmm. I pause, but this is actually the easiest one I’ve ever answered: I would relive something from the past, of course. Who cares about the future? There’s the possibility that nothing good resides there, and if so, then I definitely don’t want to see it ahead of time. But something from my past? Easy. I would choose to relive the moment I saw her face for the first time.

So, rewind. There I was on the operating table after hours of stalled labor, body numb with chest-down anesthesia for the C-section and head somewhere on Mars, when they brought her to me. My first child. Oh, her eyes! They were wide open. And her mouth, it was so tiny tucked underneath her nose! Her forehead — it was so wrinkly! The veil between our world and divine mystery had parted, and here she was, before me, an astonishment. The great doors of existence were flung wide open, and nothing, nothing would ever be the same. We were babies, both of us, she and I. Both seeing the world for the first time together, in our own distinct ways.

Ok, so you know that pivotal scene in “A Christmas Carol” when Ebenezer Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning after having been visited by the three Spirits? The part when he throws open his windows in a burst of euphoric love for all mankind, reveling in the glory of morning light and pealing church bells? “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits,” he proclaims. “I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby.”

That’s precisely how I felt. I could have run out and frolicked in the streets if I wasn’t currently being sewn back together in an operating room. There, in my daughter’s face, I could suddenly see “it,” the inherent worth and purity of the human spirit. Unlike Scrooge, however, the Spirits hadn’t shown me Death; they’d shown me Life. And better yet, I had somehow borne that Life

into this world of pealing bells and morning light. I didn’t see my future, I saw my past, and the past of everyone who had ever lived. Everybody is somebody’s baby.

And that’s when things got a little weird. My inner Scrooge kind of morphed into Oprah. I was like, “You’re somebody’s baby! And you’re somebody’s baby! And you’re somebody’s baby!” The doctor was somebody’s baby, the nurse, the grumpy cashier in the hospital cafeteria. The dude who flipped me off on I-70 was somebody’s baby. My grandma was somebody’s baby. Even the scoundrels, liars and tyrants — they were just…. somebody’s… baby! Now, when I hear of someone who’s made a big mistake, my first instinct is not to think: “What a deranged lunatic,” but, “Oh. They were somebody’s baby. What happened?”

I always say that my kids are my greatest teachers (and not the other way around). They teach me every single day to be able to perceive the hue of inborn goodness that we all possess, innocent as the day we were born. It’s always in there, though it’s often buried deep. When I in my human frailty forget this and lose my way, I need only to cast my memory back to my daughter and son’s tiny faces on their first days, and I am reminded.

So here we are, back in the truck. My dear and precious children, yes, I would choose to relive the past. I would choose the first moments I saw your faces over, and over, and over again — in this and every lifetime.

Nowadays you’re big kids, and you tied your own shoes this morning and packed your own backpacks and brushed your own teeth — and even flossed! I marvel at these things; they’re my pealing bells on Christmas, my glorious morning light.

Forever, you are somebody’s babies.

Caitlin Causey lives in Glenwood Springs with her family. She is the VOICES communications manager and believes that stories are Life.