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When we were in the seventh grade, my friend Becky's mother gave birth to a tiny baby boy, Michael, on Christmas Day. And I remember saying, "How awesome is that! A birthday on the best day of the year!"

Only I didn't actually use the word "awesome." Because in those days the word still meant AWESOME and referred to things (as my friend Dawn Houghton is fond of saying) like the Grand Canyon or childbirth.

But still. Wow. A Christmas birthday. As far as I was concerned, Michael was the luckiest kid on Earth.

Except now that I'm older I realize that December birthdays (and December wedding anniversaries, too) get swallowed up by the Christmas Crazy for the rest of a person's life. The same can be said about early January birthdays, as well, says the woman (me) who gave birth twice shortly after the New Year began.

I have to admit, though, there's still a part of me that loves a new baby at Christmastime. Which is why I'm so excited that my niece Sarah is coming home for the holidays with a baby girl in her arms. Ivory Jayne. I can't wait to meet her.

Here's the thing. I know people who feel like the only authentic emotions in this life are pain, disappointment, bitterness, alienation. And often they double down on this belief in a culture that practically insists that a person be happy and grateful all the time — even in the face of truly appalling circumstances. I understand this impulse to respect the hard emotions, because I am inclined to it myself.

But when I hold a baby — particularly during this time of year, which has at its heart the story of a new child — I think that the experience of giving birth is a more accurate metaphor for life itself. Childbirth and life are messy. REALLY messy. They're also painful and exhilarating all at the same time. And to acknowledge only the pain is as one-sided, as artificial as insisting that everything is always just fine.

The truth is that the happy and the sad coexist like twins who never outgrow their need for one another. As you hold the hand of an elderly person whom you have loved your whole life long, feeling that skin against your own, you grieve for what has been lost while remembering the joy of small moments spent together — the way he taught you how to do a cartwheel on the front lawn or a back dive into a pool of cool water with the sun spilling all around you. Or how he crinkled up his face and laughed at your fourth-grade jokes, even when they weren't funny.

Or how he drove you to the warehouse where he and his siblings and their children bagged potatoes for your grandfather — a truck farmer — to sell on the road. Or how he told you that sourdough bread tastes better west of the Golden Gate Bridge (it does), or how he and your daughter-in-law always had a contest to see who could eat the most shrimp at the family Christmas party.

What is my wish for this new child, this Ivory Jayne, then? Here it is. That she will not be afraid of sorrow or of happiness. That she will open her heart to all of it and be forever and always filled with the grace of the Christmas season.

Ann Cannon can be reached at acannon@sltrib.com or facebook.com/anncannontrib.