Loved.

Something in my heart is yearning to hold another baby. Nothing I can imagine is as beautiful as loving a child.

Today, my speech students had a debate about homeschooling, which, coincidentally, I have seriously considered for Scotty. They were really against the concept of homeschooling, except for a few students who advocated it for the sake of meeting the interests of children with special talents or different learning styles. In order to extend the discussion, I said, "Isn't a parent's job to protect her child until he can protect himself. Why not give him the tools at home instead of throwing him right into the deep end?" One of my very perceptive girls said, "Mrs. B, you just look at Scotty now and you see how beautiful his innocence is, and you want to preserve it, but the nature of life is that innocence fades...no matter what."

How true, and from the mouths of babes. Is it possible to teach and shield innocence all at once? Or does the quest for knowledge, and thus life itself, require that innocence be lost? The snake and the apple. When I teach world myths, one archetype is knowledge = death (literal or symbolic). Still, I look at my baby, or now my big boy, Scotty, and I believe that I might save him from the pain that we all must face in life. Whether I can or not, that illusion is powerful.

So why are people, why am I, so driven to raise more children? Oh my gosh, life is so beautiful, and I guess the pain that comes with learning about the beauty of life just makes it all the more beautiful. Scotty helps me to admire life, and just dreaming of his sibling does that, too. I dream that he will be a person who, like Scotty, reminds me, teaches me, about the amazing just because I have been given the priveledge of being his mommy, and children are amazing. I dream that I will be able to love him so much that he will understand love that transcends pain. I dream of protecting his innocence as long as I can, even though he will have already faced great sorrow. I pray for his other mom, that she will carry my little baby with a reverence for miraculous life, that she will love carrying him, and that she will somehow leave me with the messages that will help me raise our child with the knowledge that he is a precious, beautiful, valued, desired, LOVED, child of this universe. My baby is probably not conceived. I cannot explain how I know that I am supposed to love him this way, but I do.