Sounds of Hope

My research project has become my baby.   I am not sure that the baby has been delivered or if it is in the need of a skilled obstetrician with forceps.   Nevertheless, it is my baby.   As a mother, I know that your baby is your baby from the moment it is conceived.   It is yours – you love it, you dream and hope for it… It’s that way with my research project.   I have agonized over this project.   Like Sarah in Genesis, I have watched surrogates get their degrees and launch.   I have waited - barren.   When my Abraham produced his research project, it was I who for countless days sat at a kitchen table pregnant, entertaining other children, cooking, cleaning, laundry – typing on an IBMSelectric typewriter – delivering page after page of charts and data.   It was I who labored over that research project as if it was my own.   And it has… it was the surrogate that produced jobs, income, and success for our family.   It has borne mu...

We often eat at small Chinese carry-out restaurant that has a few tables.  I always laugh when my husband says “Oh we know the best Chinese restaurant.”  To me, it’s not really a restaurant, it’s a small carry-out place that happens to have a few tables.  However, it is clean and the food is good.  My husband and I always get the same thing – we share General Tso with extra white rice.  When we come in, they just nod.  They know our order and us.  Most of the other customers come in reciting their phone numbers and get a bag of food to go. Sometimes they forget to give us our fortune cookie.  We always ask for them.  It’s become quite a ritual.  Our son made up a “ritual” for them.  We open them.  We break them.  We eat half before we look at the fortune.  After we’ve chewed the first half, we read the fortune.  If we agree, we eat the other half.  So far, we’ve always agreed.  Several times lately, I’...