Grief recovery in one word: babies.

While Nyssa Bulkes retreated to pre-teen pastimes yesterday, I passed the time with a pre-teen in my own family. My cousin had a baby in January – the first of the new generation – and I finally got to meet him over the week off.

After deliberating with the whole family over good Irish names, his mom and dad made their decision, but kept the rest of us in the dark until delivery day. So I had to wait until my mother called to announce the news: Connor Patrick, an Emerald Isle double-whammy!

So soon after Christmas, ATMs were still spitting out fluttering moths instead of legal tender. I was in no shape to buy a bus or train ticket home. I waited patiently, and whiled away the days with e-mailed pictures from my cousin.

Last week, along with many other students, I shuttled off to see my family and friends. I made the pilgrimage up the Lake Michigan coast into Wisconsin to see my mother, who lives in a small town about an hour north of Milwaukee. This is cheese-and-bratwurst country (the closest Anglo-Saxons will ever come to soul food), and an ideal place to drown grief in the savory apex of the food pyramid.

Over the course of the week, I engulfed meals featuring cheese, cheese and ranch sauce, cheese and cream, meatloaf, cakes and frozen custard. But my emotions were only temporarily crushed under the weight rich comfort cuisine. The real support came from a person who couldn’t even support the weight of his own tiny noggin.

I’d never met an infant from my family before, so the whole baby-holding endeavor seemed too intimate for me. Naturally, the squeamishness I’d always felt evaporated when I saw Connor’s mom lift him from his little baby car seat, wrap him in his little baby blanket and give him his little baby pacifier. I was ready to do some serious baby-holding.

Yes, it is a cliché, but you try holding a month-old person and not feel pretty good about life. It’s a viewpoint thing: Here’s a little guy, ready to make a difference, ready to grow up and do some good. He’s a blank slate, a tabula rasa, a new hope. And he’s cuddly, to boot.

Holding that baby really reassured me when I was feeling that gallery of emotions. What was discomfort, insecurity and sadness melted into cozy, grinning safety in blue footie pajamas.

It’s nice work if you can get it, holding a baby, and I recommend it to anyone who knows a new mom.