Living with Lazarus

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on May 20, 2011

As the cashier lifted our tomatoes off the scale, I gasped to see that the single, sheer bag sagging with the ripe, red fruit had rung up at $ 18. (Of course, you knew tomatoes were fruit.) How many 79¢ cans of tomato sauce could you get from this single bag of tomatoes? No wonder it seems easier, cheaper, and faster to eat junk food. How many meals could I make out of $18 worth of spaghetti sauce and noodles? No wonder obesity is a problem that ironically plagues the poor disproportionately. It’s not that they have too much to eat; they have too much of the cheaper, calorie-laden, over-processed foods, and not enough of the wholesome, fresh, and nutritious foods.


Home economists might disagree, showing how easily one can whip up smoothies and homemade soups and granola. If Karla Seidita of Cheesecake Farms comes over to give me in-home demos (preferably daily), I will happily agree.


Why am I suddenly interested in tomatoes, when there is not a hint of Italian in me? Tomatoes are a heart-healthy food. So are oatmeal, almonds, avocadoes, onions, garlic, walnuts, fish, soy, and whole grains. Avoiding red meat, dairy, eggs, starchy foods, excess salt, fried, fatty foods are also good. In other words, chuck out the fun and flavor from your diet and toss in regular exercise, and with the weight reduction that likely ensues, you have a recipe for success.


The other day, I walked up the hill with my husband. He, having lost 45 pounds since November, took the ascent in stride. I, having gained ten since then, huffed and puffed beside him. I felt like the little pig and the big bad wolf rolled into one.


What a great and beautiful irony this was. Six months ago, my husband nearly died, and here he is now, affirming the advice on eating healthier and on the importance of the simple, daily walk. It’s like living with Lazarus.


In case you haven’t heard, (according to Robin Earl, the first editor at this newspaper to run my writing in 2005, everyone in this county knows the story), my husband suffered a massive heart attack and sudden cardiac arrest on Nov. 8th at age 52. He was unconscious for the first five days of his twelve days of hospitalization. He came home on Nov. 19th, used a walker for one day, rode in one of those electric wheely-carts during our first grocery store outing, and has improved steadily, having just completed his cardiac rehab therapy at Fauquier Health’s Wellness Center. Many of the medical staff have dubbed him “The Miracle Man.”


I am so glad that I do not have to face life alone. I am keenly aware of others who have recently lost their lifelong mates, and I am humbled and amazed and frightened all at once. How close did we come that day? Our life is a supreme luxury. Thank you, again, for your prayers.


In case you don’t know the story of Lazarus, I’ll introduce the Biblical one. I should say “a Biblical one” as two are mentioned in the New Testament. Having grown up in this country from the age of five, I dodged the Bible until I was nineteen. Therefore, I am sensitive to those who might be unaware of allusions to “Jonah” and things like “manna from Heaven.”


There are at least two Lazaruses mentioned in the New Testament. I say “at least two” to cover myself in case you know of others elsewhere in the Bible. This particular Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha, all friends of Jesus. If you recall, one of the sisters (Martha) was a bit of a workaholic worrywart punctual organizer type (we all need these kind of people, even if we don’t particularly like them) who got ticked off once when she was doing all the food prep while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, soaking up His words. Martha was annoyed that she did not have the services of her sister, the Chief Kitchen Aide and General Gopher.


These sisters once urgently summoned Jesus to their home: their brother was sick and might be dying, and they needed a miracle, and they needed one right away. Jesus took His time and sauntered into town some three days later – after Lazarus had been found to be clinically dead, wrapped up and buried in a rock tomb. The sisters wailed. Why hadn’t Jesus come sooner? He could probably have saved their brother. If only he had come sooner. If only the brother had taken better care of himself and kept his weight and cholesterol levels down and exercised regularly. If only, if only, if only…


What they hadn’t accounted for was the fact that Jesus, being Son of God, could handle emergencies at any time, because time is as much a creation as this earth is. They didn’t need to call 911. They just had to call on the Son.


I needed, and am glad, I had the services of both, because living with Lazarus is great. The man is worth his weight (current and former) in tomatoes.

The Volunteer Cook

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat on May 11, 2007


Volunteering, like cooking, can become a curse. Four years ago this week, I was hit with a double-whammy when I had volunteer to cook the rehearsal dinner for sixty to seventy cast and crew of Fauquier High School’s musical production that my two eldest daughters were in. Had I really volunteered? I think so. Maybe. Perhaps someone had asked and I hadn’t known how to say no. The trick is in making you believe you volunteered…


This confession is not to be mistaken for horn tooting. With at least one child in elementary, middle, and high school, no one is more anxious to fly below the “volunteer” radar level than I am. But every once in a while, I do get caught. The “Let me think about that” stalling technique, polished to perfection in a house full of kids, is useless. The Volunteer Coordinator takes you seriously and actually calls you back. Like a dog on a very long leash, you are running gleefully away when…yank! You’re called again.


I’m afraid to find out how much effort - volunteer and otherwise - goes into set construction, costuming, advertising, printing, recording, coordinating, etc. these amazing productions require. I’m afraid to know because I don’t want to feel guilty, and motherhood is guilt-laden enough. And who can ignore the duplicity of a woman who moans and groans before cooking each meal for her own family, but delivers a big meal with an even bigger smile for others.


Long before the emails to borrow crock-pots and the piled-high Costco shopping and frantic food preparation, my husband warned me to steer clear of this “opportunity.” At any of these points, he could have chided me, but he did not. I should be grateful, but after twenty years of marriage, frankly, I am just a little suspicious. Perhaps he thinks I’ll learn my lesson.


Well, believe me, I have learned my lesson. The next time I volunteer to feed sixty teens, I am going to adopt the health habits of a woman I knew in California. Her solution to everything (asthma, colds, weight, teeth) was to eat all things in their natural state. Cook nothing; crunch everything.


Let’s see how this plan would work. We’ll have to agree on giving up meat – anything requiring the application of heat to be safe to eat. Not only will you be kinder to animals and our environment, you will also save money. Hey, I can envision incorporating this plan for my own family.


Imagine this. It’s 6:00 PM. You have a splitting headache, and your toddler has just crashed for an ill-timed nap that says you are going to have a late night, and it’s not going to be courtesy of David Letterman. You haven’t thought about what’s for dinner, and then you remember: that’s right! We only eat raw food!


You pour a bag of pasta into a colorful platter. The maximum your cooking effort is going to require is a little cutting. Pour out a bag of pre-washed baby carrots. Slice up a few bell peppers. Now, isn’t that attractive? That’s half the appeal. You’re done with dinner, and it’s only 6:03 PM! The stove is cool and clean and only a cutting board and knife are dirty. You clean up from that exhausting affair; it is now 6:04 PM.


Your family sits down to eat, or shall we say crunch, dinner. Only the aroma of a hot meal is lacking. We could petition the air freshener industry to bring out a new product line: chicken soup, freshly baked bread, etc. For now, use apple or cinnamon scents, and let’s agree before hand that you are never allowed to use the kitchen air freshener in the bathrooms. The incongruity would be too much to swallow.


Also tough to swallow will be that pasta. It will be calorie-dense, so a quarter-cup will make an entire serving. But since uncooked pasta is harder to eat, you’re not going to be wolfing the stuff down. You may LOOK like wolves as you toss your heads back in an attempt to grind the stuff, but that’s yet another benefit for your molars and mandible.


Dessert’s going to be a cinch. You toss a couple of oranges at everyone. Your family looks at you with intense admiration. Unlike dinner, these are juicy and flavorful. A couple of centuries ago, the inclusion of oranges would have felt like Christmas itself. I think we can agree to peel them first, since that isn’t chemically altering the fruit. Now, wasn’t that dinner colorful, nutritious, and marvelously simple?


I’m going to have so much more time that I’ll be waiting by the phone to volunteer. I’ve decided to step up to the plate and agree wholeheartedly the next time I’m asked to make dinner for my kids’ groups. I’m just wondering, though - how many kids will step up to plates like these?

How to get a full-grown woman out of a shell

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on May 6, 2011


How is it possible that my daughter is turning 21? Is it really over two decades that I had my first encounter with the baby girl who is now a young woman? This person, who is half of me and half of my husband, but wholly her own person, introduced me to the perplexities of motherhood.


How the child survived the early years, I do not know. It probably has more to do with the grace of God and the supervision of my husband than my own skills. The very fact that I somehow botched the Biblical spelling of the child’s name when filling out the birth certificate in the hospital not be the sole indicator of my incompetence. (The ensuing years would pile further evidence in like the $5 video bin at Wal-Mart.)


In Philippians 4:2, there is a caution to two women to stop arguing: they are Syntyche and Euodia. Knowing that the former meant “fortunate” (but apparently not knowing how to spell it), I filled in “Synteche” on the birth certificate. I have since consoled myself that the pronunciation “SinTEEkee” is much prettier than “SinTYEkee.” So my variation (code word: misspelling) actually worked out better. That consolation is usually gone when we are in a waiting room and the receptionist scrunches up her face and ventures a shaky “SINtesh?” Now, if you happen to be an expert in Greek, and are laughing because I have spent twenty-one years also mangling the pronunciation of the name, do me a favor. Keep your expertise to yourself, and stop showing off. I’m not sure whether my dignity (or my daughter’s) could handle that after 21 years of mispronouncing a misspelled name.


Despite this rocky start, she’s done fairly well. The kid is majoring in electrical engineering (just like mom did), but is planning to teach high school or junior high-level math and/or technology (just like mom is). Having volunteered and worked with schools in Baltimore, she has decided that she would like to serve underprivileged children of inner cities.


Unlike me, this child is always well prepared and early to arrive when she goes anywhere. (In all her years of public schooling, she never once missed the bus.) As a matter of fact, that’s how she landed her first summer internship while at Johns Hopkins. There was to be a scholars’ brunch or luncheon on campus in her freshmen year, and we were discussing her intended attire. Should she wear Indian clothes or Western business attire, she wondered? This was a great honor, because with daughters leading our chain of children, I am usually on the receiving end of wardrobe advice. “Mom, why do you keep wearing that?”


She arrived twenty minutes early for a scholarship luncheon for the corporate sponsors, dazzled them in her business suit, and was given a personal introduction and recommendation to the corporation that hired her. One thing led to another, and she is a Student Alumni Ambassador, and was chosen to speak at University events. She’s even on the University’s home web page in a video “We are the very Model of a Modern University,” a spoof on the Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Modern Major General” song from “Pirates of Penzance.” Visit http://modeluniversity.jhu.edu/ and click play. The president of the university is on right after the maniacal-looking blue jay mascot playing the piano, and then Synteche is the one in the bottom right corner of the nine featured students. She’s also there a minute and thirty-five seconds into the video in front of a microscope. Oh, yes – and everyone in there happens to be lip-synching.


Ironically, she was in Fauquier High School’s production of this same musical under the direction of Kevin Mettinger. (Of course, you’re going to see “Hairspray” at the high school this weekend or the next, aren’t you?)


Synteche’s coming home this weekend. You might think it was for her birthday or for Mother’s Day, but it is actually to see the musical at the high school, and it has nothing to do with her younger brother manning the spotlights backstage. A devotee of the stage, she always tries to get home whenever Kevin Mettinger works his directorial magic on stage. Like an expert jeweler, he knows just how to get the students’ talents to shine.


Synteche, who was homeschooled for the greatest number of years, from kindergarten to seventh grade (notice how the eldest child always gets the brunt of things?), was so painfully shy, that she would prefer to nibble her fingers than engage in conversation with anyone. That, by the way, is simply part of her personality, and has nothing to do with homeschooling. The rest of the kids could, and often would, talk people’s heads off. She is the only non-talkative one out of the six. Theater got her out of her shell, and it’s going to get her out of Baltimore this weekend.


Happy 21st Birthday, Synteche! May God bless you as you enter official, full-fledged, adult life.

The Burden of Being Atlas Jr.

publlished in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on April 29, 2011

The issue of weight has been weighing heavily on my mind. It has been weighing heavily on other parts too, of course, but we’re not here to talk about me. Notice how my photo cuts off before the wide-angle lens is required? Be thankful for good editorial insight: they know when and where to truncate things.


I don’t want to succumb to the pitfall of obsessing over my weight. The diet and weight loss industries are doing well enough without my chipping in my two cents into their billion-dollar bins.


Even so, weight is often on my mind. My youngest boy (recently turned six) is as scrawny as ever. He’s acting like adding even one ounce to his bony frame would be tantamount to adding to the burden of Atlas Almighty. Just tell me whether Atlas was still riding in a car seat after he turned six because he hadn’t reached forty pounds YET.


It’s a good thing little Atlas Junior is my sixth child. That way, I don’t have to get bent out of shape when someone sees him and asks if he is four years old. He is, after all, still comfortably wearing size 4T, as long we can classify comfortable as the elastic inside the pants’ waist being yanked to its tightest setting and his belt being set at maximum strength so that I only have to remind him fourteen times a day to pull up his pants. Why should I be offended? It’s not a crime to have a child of petite stature, even though we live in America, home of the super-sized portion. Admittedly, no teenaged boy is going to want to be classified as “petite,” criminal or no.


For many people, this Size-of-my-Child thing is a matter of supreme parental pride. They gloat over the percentile of their child’s height (or infant’s weight) as if it were a score indicating the child’s abilities or the parents’ competence, whether by way of being genetic contributors or as nutritional providers. “Why, little Frankie is in the 97% percentile for height,” they gloat, “but we don’t know where he gets it!” I want to warn them that the oxygen might be a little thinner up there where Frankie’s elevated brain resides, but I resist.


Even though it’s not a crime to have a child that’s on the left end of the bell curve, it still feels like a blemish against the maternal record for producing such a puny person in the first place or for allowing him to remain one. Were you eating enough protein during pregnancy, or were you busy putting down slabs of chocolate cake? What kind of lousy nutrition have I got my family engaged in? 

Or should I blame genetics?  Forget genetics.  Genetics is for people who can’t own up to their own faults. “You know, Little Sammy here might have been so much more productive, except he’s got that Excessive-TV-Watcher’s gene, you know?”


Because he is my sixth child, I am at least spared the self-doubt and insecurity when the grocery store clerk comments on Atlas Junior’s size after complimenting his cuteness and inquiring his age. The clerk gasps, “Oh, really? Jeez, my son is only three and he’s already this high.” She motions just below her pendulous bosom, and all I do is smile. All I CAN do is smile. Sometimes, smiling is as much a weapon as it is a defense. I want to say, “That’s great for you. Maybe next year your preschooler can bring you to work on piggy back with his massive self.”


So why can’t or won’t my little man pack on a pound or two? And then, a brilliant idea occurs to me. All over the media and marketing, we get pointers on what is contributing to our obesity. If I reverse the logic, couldn’t I impose on him all the things we are supposed to avoid in order to help him pack on the pounds? Or even ounces? I could be happy with ounces, you know.


Special K promises that people who eat breakfast tend to weigh less than people who don’t. Great. Make the kid skip breakfast. That should help him put on pounds.


Apparently, people who have regular bedtimes, as opposed to night owls fueling themselves on hard cinnamon candies, also tend to weigh less. I don’t know how much more productive night owls are, but they can certainly claim, in addition to the extra pounds, more cavities as well as a cranky need for caffeine in the mornings.


Also, people with sedentary lifestyles, especially those “engaged” (entranced?) in lots of TV-watching, also tend to carry excess weight. So here’s part two of my master plan, a double-jackpot: the sedentary night owl. Strap the boy down and force him to watch late-night TV. He might possibly gain weight, but he’s definitely bound to gain some worldly wisdom.


Then, when he’s tired and cranky the next day, especially after I make him skip breakfast, I will give him a doughnut, which he will ravenously wolf down. I’d add coffee to this regimen, but that might stunt his already stunted growth.


Ask me in a year whether I’ve achieved success. Or, just look for me around town. I’ll be the one riding piggyback on Atlas Jr.

Sugar, the Easter Bunny, and Spiritual Health

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on April 22, 2011

Sugar is to your physical health as the Easter Bunny is to your _________.  Just thought I’d mix things up with a little analogy. Sugar has been multitasking lately: It’s been in the news almost as much as it’s been in your food. Oh, please! Don’t act like you didn’t know it was in your salad as well as in your ketchup. And please don’t tell me you’ve been putting ketchup on your salad.

I also remind you that it is the season of standardized testing. Easter is here too, even though it took its sweet time. Had it arrived any later, retailers would be juxtaposing pastel candy eggs with red-and-and-blue paraphernalia. Maybe Easter decided to be Indian this year.

Good job trying to dodge the question. So, how would you complete this analogy? Sugar is to your Physical Health as the Easter Bunny is to your _______________…

a) Mental Health

b) Dental Health

c) Spiritual Health

d) Worldly Wealth

Let me help you a little. Immediately, you can cross off Mental Health and Dental Health because those choices rhyme. Test makers don’t want you getting cutesy with them; so don’t expect them to be cutesy with you. No rhymes.

You can cross off Worldly Wealth because there’s way too much alliteration going on, and this is no poetry contest. It’s a test. Remember? Also, you will notice that it is the only one that wavers from an ending of “Health” into “Wealth,” so that should alert you automatically that it must be wrong.

So, by sheer elimination, the correct answer must be c): Spiritual Health. Sugar is to your physical health as the Easter Bunny is to your spiritual health.

Walking through the store this week, I found myself increasingly annoyed by all the sugary treats crowding the aisles. Correction: I am annoyed with myself, and my face probably showed it. I couldn’t smile. Not completely. That’s because my face was still half-numb for the fillings for my cavities. I know. I have shown off about having a sweet tooth. Now I can show off about having decaying teeth.

I deserved it. This school year, I have kept myself awake at odd hours with little “injections” of sugar – mostly that hard cinnamon candy that isn’t the greatest for your dental health or your waistline. What waistline? I know. Yes, there comes a time to pay.

So, I’m walking around, metaphorically and literally in a state of semi-numbness. I am surrounded by chocolate bunnies, marshmallow peeps, pastel-wrapped chocolates, malted eggs, jellybeans, and chocolate crosses, of all things. And these things are jeering at me. Want some more candies, little girl? Or not-so-little girl?

I’m annoyed with myself for being annoyed. I feel like the Scrooge of Easter, but what’s going to be next? Are manufacturers going to give us pastel pasta sauce with which to celebrate the season? How about some cross-shaped noodles?

And again, I’m annoyed at my annoyance. Half way around the world, people are reeling from the after effects of violent earthquakes, aftershocks, tsunamis and nuclear meltdowns. In North Carolina, people are suffering heartache over lost lives and lost homes. I am concerned about the abundance of Easter candy.

The very fact that I can go casually to the store to select foods that are available in abundance, can raise my eyebrow at the ever-inching price of gasoline, (but not to the point that I’ve ditched driving), and can contemplate the price difference between nectarines and peaches, neither of which are local or in season here, is a little dismaying.

How can life be like this? Why do we live in a world with such a dichotomy?

And now I realize the root of my annoyance. I have a myriad of reasons to be overflowing with gratitude. I should be thankful for the Resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. I should be thinking of His sacrifice and the crucifixion. Even if I am displeased with the ubiquitous nature of the Easter Bunny, I, too, have become distracted by him/it.

The Easter Bunny is our spiritual equivalent of sugar. Filled with calories that provide a quick rush of pleasure, he leaves out any nourishment – there is no message, no hope, no Good News. By the time the plate with the nutritious stuff rolls around, our bellies are achingly full and our teeth are smarting with the sweetness of the world’s pleasures.

No thanks. We really don’t want to hear about some dusty old preacher who revolutionized some dusty old place.

How much better the instant sugar rush that comes with the new dresses, shoes, and pastel purses. So it is with the Easter Bunny. He hops in and hogs the spotlight away from the meaning of Easter. He is not confrontational. He does not ask you to make any decisions or to rethink your life. Why think about Jesus when you are busy posing with the bunny?

My advice – cut the rabbit out of your Easter diet. Go lighter on the goodies, and seek the Good News. Spend time with the loves of your life, and Happy and Holy Resurrection Day. May you be blessed by its true meaning.

Reflections on the Art of being Late

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on April 15, 2011

I’m going to stop announcing a series of columns unless I write them all in one sitting, because sometimes, I have trouble revisiting topics.


A few weeks ago I had launched a diatribe against school fundraisers. The single-part “series” got interrupted because the next week I ran out of time and “recycled” an old column. The week after that, time ran out on me, meaning that I missed the column deadline. By fifteen minutes. But I missed it nonetheless, and that was the one about my middle son’s birthday.


I am often late for things. This is neither a confession nor gloating on my part; it is merely a sad observation. People are kind and say, “Yes, but you have six children,” as if I has just been caught up in childbirth, and could not make it on time like everyone else. They say it with sympathy, as if “Sixkids” were some chronic condition that requires you to take a treatment at the very moment you should be leaving the house.


I wish I had excuses, but the truth of the matter is that I have run on that fifteen-minutes-late clock all my life – pre-children, pre-marriage. Although I am often late, I am rarely too late like the time I missed the deadline.


Being five, ten, fifteen (name any multiple of five) minutes late, as an Indian-born person tends to be an accepted fact of life. My friend Becki is generous, organized, punctual, and always good for a chuckle. She is also American-American, for lack of any other ethnic label to pin on her. Becki was once invited to an Indian birthday party, and she arrived promptly at 4 PM, just as the invitation stated. Let’s just say that she ended up decorating for the party and keeping an eye on the birthday child while the hostess went up to get showered and ready. All the other invitees were Indian. No one else was going to show up until five o’clock, at the earliest. I guess being fashionably late, if you are Indian, might mean not showing up at all.


I tell you that story so you can understand my background. I’m tempted to say it is a cultural handicap, but I’m sure that out of the billion of so Indians, there must be a few punctual ones. I mean, there is a military in India, and people in the military are notorious for their painful punctuality. There are newspapers in India, too, and airplanes and trains that all have definite schedules and deadlines. Surely, there is an entire crop of disciplined Indian people. I should know, because I know one of them intimately. I’m married to him, and we get on each other’s nerves every time we have to go somewhere.


I was going to continue my rant against school fundraisers from a couple of weeks ago, and I still plan to - eventually. I’m not sure if it’s the frequency of fundraisers or the proliferation of them that bothers me, but they bother me.


In an ideal world, our children would be able to go to school and sit with a stick, some string, and a floor filled with sand, and the children would come up with some geometry that could take the Eureka out of Archimedes. The reality of the situation, though, is that if your child shows up at school with a stick, it would have to be confiscated as a weapon. The string could be used in vandalism, and forget the sand, because there is bound to be some poor, hyperactive-immune-system kid who is allergic to the stuff.


The last time I had felt real ire over selling of school things was back in 1995 – when my eldest daughter had entered kindergarten for all of five or six weeks. Now that I reflect on it, I can see that maybe, just maybe, I was a slightly obsessive parent. (Naturally, we can see I have recovered from that affliction!) There are a lot of things I did differently in parenting then than what I would do now.


In many ways, I see it as the difference between the way God the Father is portrayed in the Old Testament and God the Son is portrayed in the New Testament. (Now, you are welcome to email and correct my theology, because I have email and am used to being corrected. I have children, remember?)


Having six children in the space of fifteen years gives you time to mellow and rethink your strategy. You are not all wise. You are not that smart, either. At some point you realize that you are not going to win the battle. You just want to emerge from the fray somewhat mentally intact and having inflicted as few psychological wounds on your little loved ones.


I was strict and saw everything in black and white. Now I feel that I make more allowances. There is room for a little grace. I’m tempted to tell you, “more on this later” but we realize that could mean much, much, later. Right?

Happy Birthday, Niles

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat (Weekend Edition) on April 8th, 2011

I was going to continue my rant against school fundraisers, but last week I ran out of time and ended up recycling an old column, and this week, it happens that my middle son Niles is turning thirteen. He missed being an April Fool’s Baby with only minutes to spare. (Wait, if he had been born on April 1st, would that have made me the fool, since he was the baby? Thanks. Like I needed biological confirmation.) I had labored all day before that child was born, and even with the aid of Pitocin to speed the contractions along, it seemed to take forever. By the time you get to your fourth child, according to folklore, that child is supposed to practically deliver himself.


“Ooh! Hurry to the hospital…” or hurry and get your midwife to your home, because that child is going to be as easy to deliver as opening a pop-top can of soup or pineapple chunks. Gone is the need for a can opener – electric or otherwise.


Incidentally, does the term “midwife” sound antiquated to you? Nurse midwives are medical professionals who are highly trained and skilled. Yet, the term midwife conjures a Medieval image of calling in the woman up the street who has numerous surviving children. Furthermore, nurse midwives have all the training of nurses and then some. My nurse midwife in Ohio actually held a Ph.D. as well. Sadly, in the clinical setting she was not referred to as “Dr.” because of the possible confusion between academician and physician.


I know there are a number of male nurses. I’m not going to give you any statistics, because that would require work from me to dig up this information, and you, being a newsprint-reading sort of person, are probably the inquisitive and intellectual sort who is all too eager to look this up for yourself. I would not want to rob you of that simple joy.


All I can say is that during my husband’s twelve days of hospitalization last fall, I recall at least three male nurses who took great care of him. Now the question is, can a man be a midwife? I am sure there is some practical, gender-neutral term for the man who decides to undertake this profession. Is it a midspouse?


Anyway, what was the hold up in the delivery of my boy? I wouldn’t have been able to tell you then, but now that I’ve had thirteen years to get to know him, I know the exact cause of his in utero delay.


I suspect that this child was giving a lecture of some sort even back in the womb, and he just could not be interrupted from his oral delivery to participate in the delivery of the other kind. This child is just about the most talkative person I know. Right after, or possibly along with, my second daughter. Make that after my husband. And maybe after a couple of the other kids. OK – there’s really only one of the six children who hasn’t a lot to say, but of the other five talkers, I would say that Niles is the most talkative.


I realized this early in his youth, and knew that it would have a lifelong impact even when he was just a tot. When he was newly potty trained, he would wander into the bathroom, door ajar, and plant himself on the potty insert. All the while he was getting himself settled, he had hardly interrupted his flow of speech. We’re not going to talk about any other flows here, because that could embarrass my child, and we know that I am always so judicious about what I send to my editor’s desk. (Except that time I talked about boogers.)


There’s nothing wrong with being loquacious. In fact, it is always a good complement to a laconic individual. My only problem is that it really interferes with my own plans to impart knowledge, wisdom, and other vital instructions such as: "Unload the dishwasher! Dump out the trash!"


Once, when he was in second grade, just moments before heading off to bed, he leaned against the railing, cocked his head, and began a sort of monologue before he got the burning question that lay on his mind, “Mom, supposing that you happened to have something in your ear, like paper, or something…how difficult would it be to get it out?”


Yes, he has always used the longest words possible. When he was less than two, and wanted to talk about rubber bands, he called them rubber Band-aids. When he was looking at a plant, he even had to string that out to a “planet.” The worst was when he was telling a dinner guest that he had watched me preparing the chicken curry I served that night. He told them that he had seen me cutting the “raw-ten” chicken.


At the end of his ramble, it turned out that he had lodged a small wad of paper into his ear while trying to demonstrate a magic trick during recess. The resolution, after lots of home remedies, involved a trip to our wonderful pediatrician, Dr. Margaret Jeffries-Honeycutt.  Happy Birthday, Niles!