Soul Carving

"She had seen their birth and the birth of her love for them as miraculous, but it was just as miraculous when they first smiled, first sat up, first babbled a sound that resembled, of course, mama. The tedious days were filled with miracles. When a baby first looks at you; when it gets excited about seeing a ray of light and like a dog pawing a gleam, tries to capture it with his hand; or when it laughs that deep, unselfconscious gurgle; or when it cries and you pick it up and it clings sobbing to you, saved from some terrible shadow moving across the room, or a loud clang in the street, or perhaps, already, a bad dream: then you are -- happy is not the precise word -- filled." Marilyn French The Women's Room         How can something so precious be so achingly fleeting? I could hold this child forever and it would not be long enough. Each new baby seems to grow faster than the last. Each child seems in such a hurry to catch up to...