The grace of frowning years

Indeed, "caring for [mother] through the frowning years and glorifying the gospel are the same thing."

John Ensor's "Magnifying the Gospel and End-of-Life Issues" evokes a complex set of responses in me: a desire to do this as much as possible for the elders in my life (those in this stage and those who will enter this stage later, by God's grace), a wish that we could have conversations like this one with my grandmother, and a hope that I will engage this Christ-centeredly with my children or other care-givers in my last days (should they come relatively slowly and difficultly, as seems most common). May God help us face our own frowning years and those of our loved ones with courage.

Salary search

Apparently, I need a new (and more lucrative) job.

The power of numbers

It's hard to blink past this bit:

"If only 7 percent of the 2 billion Christians in the world would care for a single orphan in distress, there would effectively be no more orphans. If everybody would be willing to simply do something to care for one of these precious treasures, I think we would be amazed by just how much we could change the world."

This from Steven Curtis Chapman, reflecting on the beauty of adoption through his and his wife's journey. About two months now after having lost their youngest to an automobile accident in their driveway, the family is appearing on various television shows this week to talk about their hope amid grief. I can hardly count how many blogs I read have linked to the "Good Morning America" interview posted on youtube.com.

The pater familias appears again tonight, this time on "Larry King Live," so I gather this piece on CNN.com introduces that interview. Watch for it, you who have cable; I'll look for it online afterwards. Maybe he'll repeat this call. It's a stunning number: if all those adopted by the Redeemer would care for but one. . . .

Moore Saying More on Transracial Adoptions

Russell Moore adds comments to the recent debate about transracial adoption here. A provocative tidbit to whet your appetite:

Right now, there are untold numbers of children, many of them racial minorities, languishing in the foster care system in the United States. Would the social workers really have us believe that it is better for an African-American child to grow up bounced from home to home in this bureaucratic limbo than to be a child to parents whose skin is paler than his? Do they really believe that a white Russian child would do better to live in an orphanage until she is dismissed at eighteen to a life of suicide or homelessness than to grow up with loving African-American parents?

This approach loves the abstract notion of humanity more than actual humans. It neatly categorizes persons according to their racial lineages rather than according to their need for love, for acceptance, for families. Our love for neighbor means we ought to prioritize the need for families for the fatherless -- regardless of how they're skin colors or languages line up with one another.

But there's an even bigger issue here: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Dorothy Bode on NPR

Dorothy Bode, mom to a transracial family in Minneapolis, whose blog I follow, was interviewed yesterday by NPR. The main impetus for the interview seems to have been the release of an Adoption Institute study this week regarding the potential problems with race-blind adoptive processes in place since 1994. Just under 8 minutes, the interview is definitely worth a listen.

Blessed are the Barren

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson published "Blessed are the Barren" in Christianity Today last December, and I have had the article open in a tab almost ever since. I have read the first paragraph countless times, remembered that the essay was eight pages long, and switched to another tab with the good intent of reading the entire essay when I had time. But then I would forget. Today, I remembered and had the time. So today I can hardly believe I waited this long to read it.

Wilson takes a her sweet time lamenting barrenness, which will rightly make those of us who have borne babies want to weep. And she writes with a tender harshness about the reality of adoption, really calling the Church to love it with tears, knowing that it always also means grief, or else. Finally, she concludes:

"And so the barren, and the adopted, and the adoptive, live in the middle of an apocalyptic blessing. It is an uneasy way to live before the end has come. There is always something of a reproach in it, to ourselves and to others. It constantly asks us whether we believe in the resurrection of the dead."

So please make the time and read this essay; don't open it in a tab and wait three months like I did. And live the apocalypse of adoption.

Women in Christianity and Islam

Weekend before last, I served as co-leader of a discussion on "Women in Christianity and Islam" for a Christian-Muslim Relations program organized by the Christian Leadership Center at Centenary. What glorious fun. And it left me with much to think about regarding biblical womanhood, the grace of God through Jesus Christ, compassionate ministry, and real faithfulness. Maybe some other things too. But in an effort to at least post some bits about this, here are some lessons I learned from the experience:

1) Lesson: putting a face to those who don't love Jesus as the Redeemer is a blessed thing indeed. It was a true blessing for me personally to meet and dialogue with the Muslim convert who served as the other co-leader for our session (let's call her Asna). She is a learned woman and I look forward to developing a friendship with her.

2) Lesson: regarding womanhood and faith, I have more in common with Muslims than with most Christians. That is, as a complementarian Christian (one who believes that men and women are co-equal in creation and redemption but distinct in role), I have way more in common with Asna and Muslims like her at least regarding the roles of men and women than I do with egalitarian American Christians. Asna seemed intrigued to learn that the idea of gender distinction is in the Christian Bible too, and that at least I would say that the Biblical ethic is adamant that no sex or type of person has inherent second-class status to anyone else, that we are all equally depraved and then also, in Christ, equally redeemed.

3) Lesson: the issue of women and faith might serve as an entry point for interfaith ministry. My presentation just hinted at the distinctions between complementarian and egalitarian views in Christianity, and Asna's just hinted at the issues relevant to women and Islam. Both of us had lots more we could have said, and our "audience" engaged interestingly; I am hopeful that we might see more discussion on precisely this topic in the future.

For example, Asna was rather intrigued to hear that the Bible does talk about head coverings for women, that the idea of veiling as such is not completely foreign to the Christian Bible. She wants a copy of the notes I made for my talk so that she can check out the New Testament scriptures I noted; she is eager to share these with so-called Christians who stop her in Wal-Mart and think she's nuts for wearing full burkha. I chuckled at the idea of a veiled Muslim woman challenging the biblical illiteracy of so-called Christians in the grocery check-out line.

4) Lesson: genuine understanding is an important entry point for interfaith ministry. The whole program, though it featured interfaith prayer and a panel discussion where Muslims and Christians called one another brother, was no kumbayah session of inarticulate pluralistic doctrine. Now, to be sure, many of those present (though the crowd was very small in general) definitely thought that, but that was not the overt theme of things. Rather, the overt theme seemed to be respect for theological distinctions even if they are not reconcilable; the general call was one of peaceful dialogue, which I dare say we should all welcome.

5) Lesson: be a person of your book. The last imam to speak in the panel discussion called all of us there to be people of our books, earnestly living out what righteousness we read there. He repeated it often, the importance of our books. At our church, we take this for granted, that Christians determine to live in faithfulness to God's revelation in His Word, and maybe we forget that it's not an altogether common belief among so-called Christians in general.

In "our book" we Christians will hear the call to humble but urgent ministry, to radical acts of love, to passionate and thoughtful relationship . . . all through serious attention to the supremacy of Jesus over all things. But most of the "Christians" in attendance that day wouldn't have agreed with that last part. At my lunch table, two women actually dismissed the idea of original sin as not in the Bible at all "unless you read Genesis literally" but as a mere fiction of the Catholic church. I was so baffled that I could not compose a reply. Later, they were surprised to hear that I actually believed Jesus is the only way, truth, and life, and that no one comes to the Father but by Him. I'm still confused as to how someone could call herself a Christian and not believe that.

But the point here is that I think we may find in our local Muslim community people who are willing to dialogue about what God has actually said; the larger Christian community locally may not, ironically, be as interested in that. Oh the urgency of speaking compassionate truth to those around us who claim to be Christians as well!

6) Lesson: hanging around people who sincerely believe they must work hard to earn God's reward will sure highlight the preciousness of God's powerful grace through Jesus. The experience of being with these earnest Muslims made me recall with awe at so many points that Jesus died to make so many of the things they desire available to sinners like me completely and freely. He has set us free from bondage to sin! His Holy Spirit empowers us to walk in righteousness! I cannot begin to describe, then, the renewed joy in my own heart: our Jesus is indeed unique, precious, exalted, and good.

Perhaps more on observations from that day and beyond later. But for now, I have an assignment from one of my students to write a 10- to 15-line poem in trimeter. I have two lines:

Cheap bread and pickled fish:
a side dish, not a meal.

Now for eight more and something for them to say. . . .

Recommended reading

Yeah, okay, so it's been awhile. I'm busy.

But right now, I'm not as busy. Sitting in Noel's room while he murmurs in his crib, wanting to nap but not napping, sliding his airplane book in and out of the slats. Opening a page, closing it back. Not sleeping.

At least he's content.

Me, I'm typing and reading. So you read too. Here's a good one: "The Widow's Might" by Miriam Neff in this month's Christianity Today.

And then let's honor widows among us with renewed compassion and wisdom.

Adopting a pet or a child?

Here are two poignant sentences from Russell Moore's must-read article "The Brotherhood of Sons" in a recent Touchstone journal:

It is one thing when the culture doesn’t “get” adoption, and so speaks, for instance, of buying an animal as “adopting” a pet. When Christians, however, think the same way, we betray that we miss something crucial about our own salvation.

So let's learn and love it, friends, with passion and action. We meditate too little on how, through the Messiah whose birth we celebrate during this season, we now have the perfect love of the perfect Father. And we marvel too little at how earthly adoption can help us see that reality a bit better. The reality Moore conveys about the Russian orphanage where their boys lived for too long can help us do exactly that, yet it deserves warning: it is emotionally and spiritually hard to read, making me want to simultaneously genuflect in gratitude for my own adoption as daughter to the Most High and crawl on those knees to the nearest airplane that can transport me to Russia.

All that said, I have one critique for the article: Moore insists that when they teach their boys about their cultural heritage, that means teaching them about what it means to be a Moore, with all its Mississippi-ness, but not what it means to have been a Russian, with all its Tchaikovskian folk opera.

Now, maybe the spiritual precedent would suggest that it's better to know as little as possible about the previous reality but to live robustly the new adopted life. But as it pertains to human existence and adopted life, I worry a bit about this idea. I worry about it culturally, because I think everyone should have broad cultural educations, and a family with adopted children from other cultures has a particular privilege to learn such business with a great deal of personal investment.

I also worry about it socially and economically, for it is often the privilege of the relatively wealthy to adopt, and when the wealthy adopt children from foreign countries where disadvantage is the norm, then that cultural heritage is threatened with weakness and perhaps even extinction. If God has designed the Church with cultural diversity as an integral component, then local churches whose members have adopted have, again, a particular privilege to practice such stuff.

Finally, Americans are particularly good at privileging American-ness. We live rather obliviously to the global community, partially because we spend too much time in our own virtual worlds of materialism and celebrity culture. It's necessary that the adopted Moores understand their Moore-ness, with all its Hank Williams and Charley Pride, but there's nothing particularly smashing about those things. All the Moore boys, and all of us too, would do well to know some "Peter and the Wolf" too, but the Moores especially.

After all, adoption is the privilege of leaving what was squalid and empty to enter into what is rich and yours. But human adoption isn't quite like spiritual adoption in that some of that richness is of the flesh, and some of the yours is really ours. That is, human adoption does liberate orphans from a kind of loneliness into another, like the consumerist supremacy of McDonald's. But transcultural adoption liberates the adopting family from its monotony of blood into a hegemony of culture, like the broadening of Moore-ness for all the Moores from Mississippi to Russia.

For now, to be a Moore means more than Baptist ministers and the Confederacy. Now it means to be a Russian brother.

Please adopt.

This afternoon, I had a meeting at school to discuss how we faculty types might help our FYE students do better research and ask more interesting research questions. When I came home, Gram and Noel were hanging out in his room, investigating the window and carpet fuzz and exciting things like that. I should have kept that going.

Instead, when Gram left, I absentmindedly turned on the television and heard Alexis Stewart (Martha's daughter) lamenting her 42-year-old infertility and gladly confessing to Oprah that she spends $28,000 every month feeding her idol of pregnancy.

My heart sank. It sinks again every time I think it. That's about as much as an international adoption costs, and she's been spending it every month for almost two years now. With the money Alexis Stewart has spent trying to make a mini-me, she could have adopted 44 American children.

Do billionaires have more right to children that look like them and act like them? They certainly have more ability to ensure that product. But the poor middle class suffers most from this idol, it seems; Oprah also featured a couple who has taken out second mortgages on their homes to accommodate their IVF bills, and another couple who traveled to India for a foreign surrogate mother because it cost less than half of an American surrogate. (Notably, again, the latter couple could have adopted an Indian child for the same cost as their surrogate experience.)

I shudder at the financial implications, for it seems unethical to spend money in this way. Infertility has become a multi-billion dollar industry while children yet live in orphanages all over the world.

Thankfully, current discussion on Oprah.com's discussion boards (which I only had time to momentarily skim) mentions the need for balance and some responders cry out for adoption. More, though, praise the information, glad to have company in the infertility wars.

God help us to not idolize our wombs. I am reminded of my own son, who stands (literally) at the precipice of walking and makes us marvel and rejoice every day. But I am also reminded of women I know who have recently carried their babies to full term, but not to life. And I am reminded, again, of the 200+ children conceived as a result of sexual assault, finding love and comfort now in a daycare in Congo.

Please, let us practice hospitality. Will the childless not welcome the motherless and fatherless into their homes? Let us welcome them all the more for having entered our families through a strange providence rather than a medical phenomenon.

Noel at AC Steere

All right, already! Enough with the demanding comments.

My excuses for not blogging recently include the following:

1. I've been busy. The fall semester started, and I've been doing lots of media writing for the big college. And to think, I even got a new laptop (a MacBook Pro!) and I've had no time to laud it here. My "to do" list is longer than my . . . well, it's long.

2. Grandma got stuck in the bathtub. Long story. Maybe when it's less fresh and more funny, I'll write about it. No, just when I have time. Wait for that.

3. I turned 30. And who wants to write when she's old? Well, me. As per Holly's request, I'll take a photo of my present from Noel very soon and post it here. Just post nagging comments until it happens. To appease the rude masses until then, how about some photos of Noel?

The talented Catherine Humble took these last Tuesday night (coincident with the bathtub incident, by the way) at AC Steere Park. Aren't they wonderful? (Click on the slide show itself to bring up a separate tab/window with bigger photos.)

My mom the cowgirl

My mom. An Air Force family, she and her sisters grew up in Pakistan, Germany, Taiwan, and Japan. She can still count to ten in Urdu and Mandarin Chinese. She's a cultured woman of the globe.

Her parents moved back Stateside just in time for her to graduate from high school as the fastest typer in Texas. Over the next twenty years, she morphed from typist to business owner (not that she can't still type lightening fast), opening a catering company, a series of executive suites with centralized secretarial services, and then the Express Personnel Services franchise in Shreveport that my sister now manages. So she's a smart gal with lots of initiative and lots of pants suits.

But to my knowledge, she never drove an AWD vehicle across any ranch. Or talked to cows. Certainly never bottle-fed any calf. Until she married Randy Glass. Now look at what's happened.

It's a good transformation. Seems like the natural next step: globe-trotter, entrepreneur, cowgirl. And blast if I'm not jealous about her feeding that calf!

Though I've not met him, that calf has already won me, or at least the lactating mother in me. Since he was born, the mama cow has kicked him away from her udders; Mom and Randy finally had to put her in a squeeze chute and tie back her leg so he could suckle. Hopefully, he got the all-necessary colostrum and will survive.

His surrogate mom will surely do her tongue-sticking-out derndest to make that happen. Ride 'em, cowgirl!

Quotable for sure

Tonight's conversation with Grandma Esther yielded these quotables. By the end, I was in tears, mostly because I was trying to keep my audible laughter to a minimum.

1. "I meant to put my trash can out tonight. I don't have anything in it . . . much."

2. "I had the diptherie. Did you know I had the diptherie? I got it one Christmas at the store."

3. "I found those cuff links in a drawer in that little bathroom. Same drawer as a broke plate. I thought it could be fixed sometime, would be real nice to display flowers on. But I never did. That and some rags Melva gave me, like ones I gave you."

4. Grandma: "I guess Eric was glad to see you today."
Me: "Who?"
Grandma: "Your baby."
Me: "Noel?"
Grandma: "Yeah, I called him Eric."

5. "I'm proud I don't have a blue hip."

6. "She thought she had the poison ivy, but doctor says it's east from taking drugs."

My mom tagged herself

Gosh, I love my mom. Look for more about how and why later. But for now . . .
She wasn't even tagged (since she has no blog) but emailed me 8 random facts about herself anyway. I've asked if I could post them here as a "guest post" and she obliged. Her 8 reminded me what I left off my list: namely, how much I love the game of bridge (inherited honestly from the women of my distaff side) and how I am clearly my mother made over (except for the quilting thing). Enjoy!

8 random facts about my mom, guest-written by my mom:

1. I love the hand of a fabric. Randy noticed it early on: "You shop with your hands, not your eyes!" I love the folds of fabrics, the play of the light, the weave, the color combinations, the weight, you name it, I love it about fabric. Even though I've always had an affinity for fabric, I'll never look at it the same way since I started quilting.
2. Air is different colors. My favorite is just after dawn or just before the sun sets. There's a rare pink, blue, turqoise (and too many other colors to name) quality to the space between you and any particular object in the distance.
3. Reconciling a bank statement is a beautiful thing! I've come upon this love relatively late in my life. It would have been helpful in earlier times, but as they say better late than never. The advent of computer programs like Quickbooks and Excel have brought a completeness to reconciliation. Who knew there would be so many opportunities for my favorite activity: bank and credit card statements, cash reserve and bad debts, associate advances, chargebacks, ahh the list grows all the time! At the end, not a penny's difference, that's my goal!
4. I'm an oatmeal kind of gal. For the last many years I've enjoyed a half glass of orange juice and plain oatmeal made with water for breakfast almost every day. Recently I've added dried blueberries, but it will take several months to decide if they are a permanent addition to the menu.
5. I love looking at old family photos. All, except ones of myself. To see Jennifer stretched out on the couch sucking her thumb at about age 3, and Emily riding her tricycle in the backyard gives me a thrill and warms my soul. But then there's that photo of myself, hairstyle and clothes of some unknown era. What was I thinking??
6. I would wear a long gown with a train everyday to work if I could. I think there is nothing quite as elegant as a gown with a train and I've decided there just aren't enough opportunities to wear one. My daughter's wedding dresses are sheer beauty! But let's face it, that's a one-time opportunity. I did have the hint of a train in the gown I wore to ILC this year, but it only whetted my appetite for more!
7. A good hug will fix anything! I'm a hugger from way back. I don't understand or even really trust people who don't like to hug. I've known several people like that, but the joy they miss is immeasurable. Good people hug. Or anyway that's how it seems to me.
8. Finally, I'd like to discuss a finesse. A finesse is a beautiful thing! Getting someone to do what you want them to do without complaint, or hesitation, or even really knowing they're being led to do is a high art. In Bridge, a finesse yields extra tricks. In life, a proper string of finesses could end war.
   

Curious as the World Turns

It's Friday night. Noel has finally fallen asleep after lots of rocking: every noise, every shift of the tide, every relaxation of a new muscle of his own and Noel arches his back and pins his eyes open to check it out.

This isn't new. Most naptimes and night-bedtimes go this way: sometimes it's accompanied by fussy crying, but usually it's just a long winding down with lullabies. Even at only five months, our son seems rather concerned that he will miss something important if he submits to sleep.

But finally, last Friday night, with Curious George in hand, he falls asleep in my arms and I take him to the bassinet. When I lay him down, he manages to keep Curious (as Micah calls him, even though I insist that's not his first name) in his hugged arms and looks particularly precious, so I call Micah in to look at him.


Micah brings the camera and even though he takes care not to use the flash (hence the blurry image), I am skeptical. The camera still clicks, a vestigial sound alluding to the actual click a non-digital shutter would produce.

Noel's eyes crack open once and he tightens his grip on Curious. We finally exhale, figuring he has not really awoken.

As Micah gets ready to take one more picture, Noel's eyes open again, focusing straight on daddy and widening his eyes. Not long after this, he drops Curious and extends his arms to be picked up.


Nothing to confirm a suspicion that there's stuff you're missing during sleep than to wake up and see daddy hovering over your bed with a camera.

Today's Mail

I didn't think I'd been away from the office that long. Went by the department to check mail at least two months ago. Apparently I should have gone earlier, because today I found on my desk a big USPS bin, which our friendly campus mail persons must have lugged over to keep the stuff from overflowing onto the floor.

So I lugged the bin downstairs to the car and just sifted through it all at home. What was inside?

1. Eight free textbooks I did not request but am cool with receiving. One publishing company sent books they've sent me before (that time upon request).
2. Lots and lots of marketing material from various publishing companies that want me to buy books. I'll request at least one as a possible teaching text and put several others on my wish list.
3. Several interoffice memos: one from the music secretary who's filling in for me as ODK faculty secretary while I'm on leave and doing a much more brilliant and generous job than I think I'd have ever done, another from the public relations office sending copies of invoices related to marketing we did for Lauren Winner's visit last November, another from the FYE program chair inviting me to read the philosophy and goals for a similar program at St. Lawrence University, another with the minutes from a previous faculty meeting, and yet another from the registrar's office informing me that one of my advisees is failing two courses.
4. One wedding invitation, announcing the to-be wedded bliss of a former student and notifying me as to his two registries.
5. A few brochures for summer writing programs at other universities.
6. Two bits from Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion received via inter-library loan: an essay by poet Scott Cairns entitled "The End of Suffering" and an interview with Alice McDermott. More on those later, no doubt.
7. An envelope from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary announcing their "CS Lewis: The Man and His Work – a 21st Century Legacy" conference this October. The poster they sent is beautiful, and so is the conference. Arthur, we must go! CFP has a March 31 deadline. Can we make it? Let's go anyway.
8. And then, at the bottom of the bin, a Noel gift from one of my favorite writers. Two board books and a simple card. Very, very cool. It's the positive yin of the negative yang that came to light yesterday when a visitor responded to Noel's active legs by saying it will be okay if, when Noel starts moving on his own, he annihilates some of the books on my lower bookshelves, because they're replaceable, and I nodded nervously because I guess she's right, but I can quickly form lots of arguments for how no book is really replaceable, especially the author-signed ones that sit on those lower shelves. And I'll be derned if the kid rips those pages up or marks out my marginalia with some Crayola. Shifty better be ready for a new box in our moving oeuvre: not just "Ma to Mc" but "signed by author so don't leave these in the sun, cuh." Anyway, receiving in today's mail two Happy Noel books from that giver is the inverse of happy Noel one day taking a crayon to one of my books. That's the point.
   

So we read the two new books to Noel as he emerged from the bath tonight, hoping to again instill in him the truth that books are our friends. Then I pasted Boudreaux's on his you-know-where, put a doubler in his diaper, and handed him off to Micah for rocking to sleep. Now he's slumbering, and we're blogging. What an evening.

How Pretty lost his beauty

My grandmother and I just had a conversation about nicknames. It began when she asked what "Nolan" was doing and how she thinks she might take to calling him "Baby" because she can't ever get his name right, always wanting to add a "g" or "r" (note that "Nolan" has neither a "g" or an "r" in it). But she figured she couldn't call him that forever because "Baby" is hardly a good nickname for anyone past baby-hood.

Of course, this reminded her of their neighbors back in the day whose son she always called Baby, because that's what his mother called him. One day, his father heard her say this and asked her not to call him Baby, so she asked what she should call him and he suggested "Son" since that's what he called the boy. Grandma has no idea what his real name was. (Apparently his father didn't either.)

This made her remember how her brother C. H. (by all accounts, those aren't initials but his given name . . . or letters) was always called "Abe" by their other brothers. She believes this began because he often asked his father why their neighbor Abe did thus and such with his cattle. I guess preoccupation with a neighbor named Abe justifies taking said neighbor's name for your own nickname.

The story goes that "Abe" stuck, though it's worth noting that I've never heard anyone refer to C. H. as "Abe" in my life. But she didn't think her other brothers ever had nicknames.

"Well, there is Pretty," she mused. Her brother Dennis was known as "Pretty" for a while at school when the other kids made fun of the primping required to care for the ringworm he had on his nose. The teacher didn't like the name, and neither did their parents, but somehow the other brothers heard of it and called him "Pretty" for a while.

"But when the ringworm went away he lost his beauty," Grandma concluded. And that was the end of the conversation about nicknames.

Stumpy! Stumpy! (Imagine Brando screaming that.)

Let's all take a thankful moment for the stumpy.

This Australian skink sacrificially loves her babies, carrying them until they weigh "on average, 35 percent of the mother's body weight," which is like a human birthing a seven-year-old. Obviously, the mother has trouble breathing, eating, and moving toward the end of gestation, making predator evasion difficult and general living uncomfortable.

And I thought I was swollen at 9 months. Give me stretch marks any day just so Noel comes out at 7 pounds, 13 ounces, rather than the weight and size of Anna Kate. Bigger, really, but I can't think of an actual seven-year-old at the moment.

The creation can teach us much about perseverance and longsuffering, but there is something particularly peculiar about the way God makes new creatures that generally seems rather instructive to me. At the very least, much gratitude wells up in this heart for the stumpy and for the radically different process that is human birth. I'm glad stumpy females go to so much trouble to make new stumpies, unwittingly but nevertheless consistently risking themselves for reproduction. But I'm also glad that it's less trouble for human females to make new humans.

Revisionism

Last week, I joined four other women and their babies (one is still in utero) as show-and-tell for a Human Growth and Development class at Centenary. We began by telling a little about ourselves . . . pregnancy, birth, and post-birth. Since I was last and the other women had already introduced the subjects of natural childbirth and breastfeeding, I quickly told my labor story and then improvised some comments about how amazed and pleased I was at the automatic and powerfully natural love I felt for Noel immediately upon his birth.

The comments went something like this: "I was never a baby person before, never babysat, never had those oogly eyes some women especially just have for babies. Of course, I was excited that our baby was on the way, but I still didn't feel any particular bonding with Noel while he was in the womb. But when Noel appeared in the world, I felt a complete love for him that I cannot explain except that this is how God makes mothers."

But that's not what the class heard.

I saw the professor the other day, and she said that the written reports the students submitted after our visit expressed much concern for baby Noel. They heard the first clause: "I was never a baby person before," at which point I noticed a collective dropping of heads, each student writing that down in the class notes. But they quit listening at that point and apparently presumed I meant, "I was never a baby person before, and I'm still not, and I'm thinking of leaving Noel out in the snow to fend for himself."

Good thing we don't have snow around here. Good night, Irene.

Once upon a time . . .

there was a fussy boy named Noel. He was the most precious baby in all the land, even if he had lately learned to scream (at least he learned to smile first).

One day, his parents went out for their first hot date since Noel was born. They made reservations at Superior's Steakhouse and filled their pockets with the gift certificate a friend had given them plus the cash Opa had given them, just for this purpose. When Aunt Emily came to babysit, she found neither parent ready, but they quickly gussied up, showed her the ropes of cloth diapering and bottle warming, and then drove away.

At the restaurant, Noel's parents were seated in the cigar room, where they feasted on Cabernet (which the wine steward recommended), bisque, spinach salad, ribeye, Dijon-crusted mahi-mahi, creamed spinach, and braised mushrooms. Meanwhile, a very tall woman sat on the leather couch with her floor-length fur coat and a glass of champagne. The men at the next table ate raw oysters. A couple nearby took a thousand pictures of each other with their one-candled cheesecake; Noel's dad said they didn't seem to speak good English, but Noel's mom still felt oddly out of her league.

An hour and a half later, they left sated and happy. Because the wind had not yet pierced their skin, Noel's parents decided they would go out for ice cream before returning home, but they first called Aunt Emily to see if she would like for them to bring her some home. She didn't answer; not a good sign. And when she called back, Noel was wailing in the background with the long, pitiful wail that says "I'm not happy, and I've not been happy for some time. I'm not hungry and my diaper is fine, and I refuse to be comforted by this aunt person, even if she was there the moment I was born. So there."

Noel's parents offered to come home, but Emily said she was fine and we should go. Good soul, patient soul. By then, Noel's parents were in their car, but they were still shivering from the cold wind and they realized they would be crazy to get ice cream, lest they remain frozen until March. Hot chocolate was what they really wanted, and they had that at home.

So, home they went. Uncle Craig was on the couch, playing a football video game, and Emily did not even look wearied, trying unsuccessfully to feed Noel a bottle. Noel's mom changed clothes quickly and held the wailer, who calmed in about five minutes and fell asleep from exhaustion.

The moral of this story: Noel is a mama's boy. But it's probably okay to be that way when you're barely over two months old.

The end.