Day 8

From Mr. Copperfield:

"What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him. Deeply as I felt my own unconscious part in his pollution of an honest home, I believed that if I had been brought face to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach. I should have loved him so well still - though he fascinated me no longer - I should have held in so much tenderness the memory of my affection for him, that I think I should have been as weak as a spirit-wounded child, in all but the entertainment of a thought that we could ever be re-united. That thought I never had. I felt, as he had felt, that all was at an end between us. What his remembrances of me were, I have never known - they were light enough, perhaps, and easily dismissed - but mine of him were as the remembrances of a cherished friend, who was dead."

So, to each, as is...

Later:

5:18 pm, SGC was born. Tina and I were 5 minutes from heading out the door for an afternoon date when Mama S calls, sez I'm here, she's coming. We are cellphone-aphobes: had she called a moment later, we would have been long gone. We drop Walden off as planned and head for the hospital: Tina joins S and D in the labor and delivery room, I settle into the lobby with Copperfield and the More Hilarity of DC and his love for Dora. We are all in our elements. Hour and a half later, Tina saunters out, "she's here." Back to the room, all calm and quiet, and a beautiful black-haired baby. 80 pages of Dickens and a few strolls around the hospital, and a brand new pretty baby in the world? Too much.

Peace to Baby Grace.