I am a great fan of Madeline L'Engle -- devour her kids books (A Wrinkle in
Time) as eagerly (perhaps even more so) as her adult books.  (A truly well
written "child's" book as as much appeal for an adult as it does for a
child....the Narnia series, Winnie the Pooh, etc).  But I digress.  I just
got her newest book entitled "Penguins & Golden Calves (Icons & Idols), and
was intrigued by something she wrote in the first chapter, which has to do
with penguins (she took a trip to Antartica) and intimacy.  I believe she is
about 75 or 76....

She is talking about how in days gone by, many children died, and says, "Did
parents hold back from intimacy until the hcildren had survived those early,
precarious years?  How did a woman fell, knowing that if she had eight or ten
or twelve children she'd be lucky if she raised half of them?

"Now that the death of a little one is not the norm, it has become unusual
and terrible.  Is there any way a woman can nurse a baby and not feel
intimacy?  Was that why wet nurses used to be employed?  And later, why
bottles of formula were substituted for the mother's breats -- to prevent an
intimacy that could be shattered by illness and death?  I nursed my babies;
nursing is as intimate an act as making love.

"And then I thought:  perhaps the very precariousness of human relations made
the intimacy all the more poignant and all the more treasured.  It's only
been in the past few generations that we have been allowed easy intimacy,
assuming mothers will not die in childbirth, that babies will live to have
babies themselves, that we'll all reach retirement age and enjoy our
well-earned leisure.  Perhaps that's why we've messed up intimacy; we simply
weren't prepared for a lifetime of intimacy -- and still aren't."

Food for thought for a sunny Friday.

Jan Barger