Two young women in our extended family of friends have given birth in the past few weeks. In honor of these new children's arrival, I've sent this short piece from The Persuasion, Chapter 18, to the new mothers (photos by Priscilla Harmel, left of Benjamin Israel, right of Ava Lester):
Perhaps the world of the newborn, in my case, newborns, was familiar terrain to the billions of women who’d come before, but the two six-pound bundles of body, mind, and spirit that I was shuffling from breast to bath to back were portals to a universe unknown, never even considered, with its own rivers and storms, its own unsolvable mysteries.
