There is a segment of our population who cannot complain. They do not know how to criticize, show anger or hurl insults.

It is not as if things always go their way. Most babies find at least some parts of life distressing. They harbor no guilt about letting their mothers know when they are upset, or frightened. But extraneous negativity? Naaah. When you finally do pick them up they will not keep crying just to punish you. Pain, hunger, and fear are all worth howling about. Not revenge. 

I find it interesting that all of us have experience behaving this way. Whether or not we remember, there was a time when we wasted not a particle of energy on pessimism. 

Those early years of my own life are bleary, but I sure cherish my regular doses of contact with small people who still operate under the belief that life is mostly great. A worm, a bin or beans, finger paint are each enough to be fully content. 

With a baby, sad is sad. With a complicated grown up like me, sad can be a combination of worry, disappointment, resentment, and jealousy. It is harder for me to untangle those feelings, and nearly impossible for John to. Sometimes, I cringe to admit, when John finally does do what I wanted, I still mope because he was so slow in getting around to it. Not so with babies. 

Now let me not suggest that the crying that happens early in life is easy to deal with. It can wear a mother to the bone. But gradually, through trying to comfort nine babies, I began to shift from concluding that the tears were a reflection of me, and my failure as a mother, to seeing them as a window into how this little, hurting person was coping. I did not always want to look through that window, but with my ego nudged a tad to the side it became possible.