Another "lurker" brought out into the open by the chance to add my favorite breastfeeding quote.  This is from  THE BLUE JAY'S DANCE  by Louise Erdrich.  It is a wonderful journal-type book about a year in which she has a new baby--great source of mother love:

"One day as I am holding baby and feeding her, I realize that this is exactly the state of mind and heart that so many  male writers from Thomas Mann to James Joyce describe with yearning--the mystery of an epiphany, the sense of oceanic oneness, the great YES, the wholeness.  There is also the sense of a self merged and at least temporarily erased--it is deathlike.  I close my eyes and see Frost's too peaceful snowy woods, but realize that this is also the most alive place I know--Blake's gratified desire.  These are the  dark places in the big two-hearted river, where Hemingway's Nick Adams won't cast his line,
the easeful death of the self of Keat's nightingale.  Perhaps we owe some of our most moving literature to men who didn't understand that they wanted to be women nursing babies."

Sandee Luttkus, LLLL
Westhope ND  where it is honestly -25 F and -80 F windchills--day 2 of school being canceled due to blizzard conditions