Flower of the Universe

Sade, A Wrinkle in Time

10 Hours to impact

Maria sat backstage next to Eva as they awaited her turn to address the Universal Ceremony. She was doing her best to distract herself from the nightmare about the flight. How on earth do they give the last speech to a little child? she thought, as she reminisced about how young Eva still was and just how fast time had flown since her birth. It seems like just yesterday I held you helpless in my arms, smaller than a pair of Sebastian’s shoes... and now, look at you, so tall, long dark golden hair, full of life, ready to stand alone in front of hundreds of people, dozens of cameras, journalists. Is it me, or are you just growing up way too fast? Maria, lost in thought, contemplated Eva’s pale-skinned, rosy-cheeked baby face. They come to see the fire burning in your heart, they want to witness this love from the start...

There is something about a newborn baby—something quite unique in our humanity. It's that gaze they have. Some sufferingly cry too much, others surprisingly too little. But no matter how fretful a baby may be during those first few months of life out here, all babies, at one point or another, have that gaze about them. An enlightened gaze. Spend enough time with a newborn and, invariably, there it will be. The baby lies there motionless, tearless, expressionless, just gazing. Taking it all in. Eyes wide open, lips slightly apart. With this pure gaze, their head doesn’t move, only the eyes do. Every baby has these moments. Every father melts in them, and every mother exaggerates their divinity.

We were all babies once. We were all flowers of the universe once. We all just gazed, wowed by our existence. Absorbing. Contemplating. Processing. Overwhelmed by the fascinating sensation of it all. It’s all new. Big. Colorful. Mesmerizing. Captivating. We’ve all been there. And almost all have witnessed it. It's that newborn gaze.

Eva Llhamas de Aviz was born on the 13th of May 2013, in Fátima, Portugal. Her mom, Maria Electa Llhamas, age 44, a discrete warrior of motherhood. Her dad, Sebastian “Thaora” de Aviz, the prime minister of Portugal since 2011. Eva didn’t cry. Not even the mandatory kick-starter-for-the-lungs-first-cry of birth was heard center stage when she popped out, nor a later cry in the intensive-care unit of Maternidade Nossa Senhora de Fátima. Just silence. They couldn’t believe it. Mom and dad, Dr. Josefina, the nurses, everybody. She just didn’t cry, she never did. They were concerned at first, Maria with her panicky temperament, Sebastian playing it cool, both tense.

But Eva didn’t. Ever.

She just sat and gaze from sunrise to sunset, never crying, hardly ever laughing, smiling a few times a day. And what a smile it was, Eva’s smile. Large and serene, picturesque, giggly at its highest extreme, barely noticeable at its minimum. When she smiled, stars aligned. Those were Eva’s first weeks: waking up, gazing, breastfeeding, gazing, being enlightened, breastfeeding again, gazing, smiling, having her nappy’s swapped, gazing, falling asleep, over and over again, sunrise to sunset. Gigging, Gurgling. Gasping. Gorgeously.

Godlike. God bless the baby. When she slept, softly, angels came.

On her third day, the doctors tried to induce crying through physical pain. Let’s try a needle, they said. Still no tears, just a very intense facial expression, as if she wanted to shrink every part of her face into a dot, from eyebrows to chin. As if she had just sucked on the sourest lemon in the entire orchard. No cries, no tears. A couple more rounds of forced pain were attempted a month after she had been born, until Sebastian halted the experimentation. He knew from firsthand experience what torture was. He had the scars on his body to prove it. He forbid the needles and the probes. Enough! he said, sharply, and that was that: no more poking. They would just have to wait for that first cry.

Little did he know at the time, he wouldn’t be the one to witness to her first tears... The Senator would while explaining the first rule of chess and piercing a bone splinter into both her delicate skin and her soul.

Those first months passed and the doctors started to relax and accept the phenomenon, but then the psychologists started in. Not because of the absence of crying but because of the absence of speech. On her first birthday: Does she have vocal cords?, they would ask, along with many other questions, many of which ridiculous, all pointless. Eva was Eva. We are all different, all absolutely, completely unique. Not even two identical twins are 100% identical, Mother Nature doesn’t nurture photocopies. We are all the only, single version that ever existed of us, as was Eva. Extraordinary how differently uniquely original this particular fluff of a baby really was, a miniature sixth finger on each of her hands.

She was Maria’s messiah from the day she found out she was pregnant, and that’s what she would always be to Maria: her minuscule marvel of a messiah.

Eva spoke her first words when she was three, out of the blue at dinner. Just like that, a full sentence. The first time anyone ever heard her speak, she suddenly said : A spoon full of sugar., pronouncing each syllable distinctly. Three years later, here she was, ready to give a five-minute speech. They want to know if it’s true... – Maria was still lost in thought. – ...they want to know there’s someone in the world, as lovely as you.

• - My love, just a quick question: was Silva on the flight, in your nightmare?

• - What? – Maria’s daydream, interrupted.

• - Sorry to ask, it’s just that... – Sebastian stuttered.

• - I think so. Eva is about to do her thing, Shh.