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We had the birth of our third grandchild in 21 months tidily strategized.
When Gabriel was born a year ago last June in Northern California, the drill went so smoothly that a Swiss timepiece would have been embarrassed by how slickly we planned out even extraneous details.
When Maya Nechama was born a month later near Jerusalem, our martial precision made Gen. Patton click his heels and smile down on us from Military Heaven.
By No. 3, we were mavens, invulnerable experts.
If you had walked into our War Room at home, you would have seen a web of flight schedules to and from Portland, from three different starting points across California.
All tactical maneuvers were months in the arranging. Somewhere, Eisenhower and Pershing were blushing at Diane’s stunning gifts of vision and execution.
The baby had the easy part, a non-speaking role, if he wished. Our script called for him to merely stroll out into a spit-polished, ready-made world.
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Did Stork Stack the Deck?
The only detail overlooked was that no one had remembered to divulge our generally unalterable plans with the stork.
Diane was scheduled to fly out to Portland tomorrow morning.
Our Master Flight/Birth/Bris plan called for the young man to enter our world between the end of Wednesday’s edition and the beginning of Thursday’s.
Right down to the mohel — hardly a profession of proliferation in Oregon — all participants were relaxed and standing by.
Instead, with a sudden surge of urgency, Sanda telephoned her mother last Thursday.
She announced the imminence of her first sally into motherhood. It was almost past the hour for Bubbe to rush in from the bullpen.
How could this be? Wasn’t everyone’s flight from various points on a California map firmly in place? Where was the child-to-be’s sensitivity?
Shouldn’t Seven Be a Magic Number?
Hardly a novice at birthing, this would be the seventh ritual at which Bubbe had played either a starring role or a very supportive one.
So she knew how truncate five days’ worth of suddenly scrapped plans into five hours devoted to packing, scrambling and flipping her flight plans.
By 4 on Friday morning, Diane and I were airport-bound.
Starting at 9:15, hourly bulletins began pouring in from Portland. By the lunch hour, a hospital room photo of Veteran Mother and Freshman Mother had arrived in Culver City.
Closer, closer throughout the afternoon.
A Beautiful Nexus
Minutes before 7 o’clock, at the very moment that Friday was changing into the Shabbat, the heavens opened, the sun winked, the baby moon grinned, and a chorus of voices joyfully rang out,
“He-e-e-re’s Sammy.”
I didn’t hear his sweet voice, emanating from 7 pounds, 3 ounces of probably unparalleled beauty, until he was 25 hours old.
Speaking from deep inside the thorny thicket that is American political rhetoric, I assured Diane I was prepared to take the next flight north so that Sammy and I could sit down on the nearest furniture and engage in our first pure heart-to-pure heart shmooze.
“I want Sammy to see and hear what a conservative looks like before liberals gang up and invite him to their ‘Adventures in Creative Truth’ classes,” I told Diane.
Beware — They May Bite
“One day old is not too early to teach young Sammy that he should be properly skeptical of liberals.
“Here. Lean over this way, Sammy,” I would say, “so I can share several pertinent observations you should know about even before your bris.
“You and your tender ears should look askance at a certain silky-talking Presidential candidate who has the media mob anointing him America’s first savior since Lincoln. But he seems to be an empty shell. You stand warned, Sammy, that Fibber Obama may turn out to be a worse fibber than Hillary Clinton, which would surprise even sensible Republicans.
“Sammy, Fibber Obama said that even though he has been a member of a certain radical black church in Chicago since the 1980s, he had no idea his flamboyant, foul-mouthed pastor — as greedy for publicity as Britney Spears — was a racist, hate-spewing separatist who will say darned near anything to draw attention to himself. If Fibber Obama has not noticed his attention-trolling pastor’s dirty mouth in 20 years, as he has testified, he probably would miss a nuclear attack on this country, too.
Change Tires? Change Direction?
“Fibber, as we call him at the secret weekly meeting of The Four Republicans of Culver City Club, has campaigned for more than a year on a promise of Change, with a capital ‘C.’ But, Sammy, when he was asked asked what ‘Change’ he means, Fibber says, ‘I can’t tell you until after I am elected.’
“Andrew Ferguson, a smart magazine writer, concluded this weekend that Fibber’s self-consumed Presidential campaign is about solipsism, which even some Democrats are admitting.
“Thanks, Sammy, for your time. Now both of us need to start preparing for your bris.”
