The doctor came up from town the other day to give the D.A. a checkup and found me outside on the grass, with Lotte’s siblings crawling all over me and teasing me and me tickling them in a great big screaming pile-on :) This doctor has such a stick up his ass — fiddling with his cuffs and popping the snaps on his bag the whole time he was talking at me… he clearly thought this was inappropriate behaviour for a ‘sensible young man’. looking down his nose at me… But I didn’t let him get to me; I let him blather on about his matters of consequence, and just kept building houses of cards for the kids to knock back down. And so he went back into town and moaned to everyone how the D.A.’s children were already spoiled enough, now Werther was ruining them completely.

Mmm…it’s true, though, William dear — the kids have got the #2 spot in my heart. It’s funny, watching them and seeing all the little seeds inside them of personality traits that’ll come in so handy someday… catching glimpses in their stubbornness of resolve and personal integrity down the road, and seeing hints in their giddiness of the positivity and ease you need to get through the hard parts of life — and all so uncorrupted, so whole! It always, always makes me think of His great line: “Unless ye become as one of them!” And meanwhile we take them, our equals, whom we should look to as role models, and we treat them like second-class citizens. “They don’t know what’s good for them!” What, like we do?! — and what right do we have? “Because we’re older and wiser!” — Dear Lord, when You look down from heaven, all You see are grown-up kids and little kids, and that’s all; and Your son made very clear long ago which ones give You more joy. But they believe in Him and don’t listen to Him — that’s a grown-up thing too! — and they raise their kids to be like them and — eugh. Be well, Will. /rant