Of Essays

I entered an essay contest today in an effort to finally get our family to Southern California, as we've been aiming to do for some time now but continually fail for lack of funds.  Philip teased that my entry would beat the pants off those little third graders writing their essays (no worries, though, in actuality, one of the requirements was being of the age of 18 or older - I won't really make children cry when I win).  So, for the sake of my overwhelmingly weary eyes, I choose to post my essay as tonight's blog.  Enjoy.

"He was so tiny - brand new from the womb, wrapped in the hospital-issued blanket, head warmed by his small knit cap.  Being our second child, we thought we knew how a baby could change a family, but we underestimated him.  In this one little person was our first son and our daughter's first experience as a sister.  Lacking in him was the temperamental fire of his big sister.  Somehow he had inherited from us all things mellow.  He would need that attitude to endure the loving attacks from a two-year-old sibling who does not yet understand the difference between a hug and a tackle. 

Before he was born, I did not know of the compassion possible in my daughter's heart - the way she could kindly, voluntarily share the applesauce for which she had begged for twenty minutes or the way one cry from her little brother could send her scurrying for the one object, any object, that would once again secure his happiness.

Before his entrance into the world, I did not know a heart could be so equally divided, and yet joined - wholly and unequivocally in love with two little beings at once.

There is no one moment which so clearly brought our family together more than the moment in which our family first came together - that first embrace when brother met sister and four lives were made whole."