What doctors tell you to do is often based on hunches and common sense, but what’s common sense today wasn’t common sense years ago.
After a catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, sometimes an aid worker helps by delivering a baby, sometimes the job is just delivering a cheeseburger — or perhaps a thousand cheeseburgers. And sometimes the simple act of providing a yarmulke to an old man can provide solace.
So it was for Rabbis Chaim Kolodny and Tzemach Rosenfeld of Hatzolah of Los Angeles, an organization of emergency-medical volunteers with particular expertise in assisting members of the Orthodox community. When they decided to embark for the stricken Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina, they wanted to be available to help Jewish victims who could benefit from their knowledge of religious practice. But they also were prepared and eager to help anyone they could, and they had no trouble locating storm victims and relief workers who needed all sorts of assistance.
When I got engaged, my mom\’s dearest girlfriends, whom I affectionately call \”The Crones,\” all sent me a card. On the front it said,
\”Now that you are engaged, no one will ever ask you again \’When are you getting married?\’\” On the inside it read, \”So, when are you going to have a baby?\” Although meant in jest, I have found that card to be profoundly true.
Israelis are outraged by a picture of a Palestinian baby dressed as a suicide bomber.
The stork has been awfully busy lately. It seems as though everyone I know is having a baby. A couple I haven\’t heard from in months sent a postcard with a picture of what I thought was a Sharpei puppy — it turns out the little boy\’s name is Jesse. I didn\’t even know they were expecting.
\”The Grandfather Thing\” by Saul Turteltaub (Tallfellow Press, $16.95).\n\nSaul Turteltaub, whom I\’ve known for a good many years, is a funny man and a funny television writer. If you laughed at \”The Carol Burnett Show,\” \”The Jackie Gleason Show,\” \”That Girl\” or \”The Cosby Show,\” tip your hat to Turteltaub, because they are among the 30 major TV shows he has written or produced over a 40- year span.
Have you ever been to the funeral of a 10-month-old? It has to be one of the most unnatural of human experiences. The burial of an infant who was deliberately murdered by terrorists is all the more tragic for the baseless hate it represents.
Memo to first-time fathers: If your baby is crying, she\’s probably wet. Or tired. Or hungry. Or angry. Or confused about what\’s happening in the big, new, strange world she lives in.
The other day, I got a sample of Pampers in the mail. It doesn\’t happen very often now, fortunately.
Until children reach a certain age, parents seethem simply as beloved offspring. Flesh of their flesh. Withbittersweet nostalgia, they remember all, from the Gerber days tograduation day.
But then it happens: the transformation.
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