Very Like a Whale

We know that our vast interstellar readership was sorely disappointed that we left them without a post last Sunday. We can only say, paraphrasing the great nineteenth-century British jurist, Baron Bramwell, that for the convenience of mankind, citizens of the blogosphere who become the maniacal addicts of a particular blog must put up with such disappointment as due care cannot avoid. We can further console our disappointed readers that we are now back—that you come to us like the weary desert traveler you now come upon an oasis, the water doubly sweet for your long thirst; like the erstwhile convict, now set free, the air of liberty rumbling in your lungs like Jove’s thunder; like the beleaguered executive clandestinely shelving Why You Deserve to be Rich and How this Book Will Make it Happen! and looking into Chapman’s Homer; like the renascent teen discovering Bach after a misspent youth of cacophonous popstrosities—like all of these you now burst forth from two weeks in the wilderness into the bucolic verdure of our illustrious Review.

Monday (9 October): Far too long ago to be remembered.

Tuesday (10 October): A happy birthday to our old friend, Dave Hedengren, who on this day completed his first quarter century. Congratulations, Dave, but you’ve still got nothing on Strom Thurmond (or Isocrates for that matter). Justin had bishopric meeting at 6:30 and didn’t get out of class until 6, so he invited Lia and the girls to meet him at the church for some family time in the nursery room during the short break. All was going well, until about 6:02 when Julia, flouting once again Elmo’s counsel that “When you feel like you need to go, just go, or else you might have an accident,” did not “just go” when she “fe[lt] like [she] need[ed] to go” and, in accordance with the inexorable law of the harvest, had, true to Elmo’s warning, “an accident.” The products of said accident spread quite diffusely through her panties, pantaloons, socks, and shoes. The upshot for Julia was that, as the diaper bag contained spares for Eli only, she got to spend three quarters of an hour running about the church house in an oversized T-shirt (her “workout” shirt, as she calls it), a pull-up diaper, and nulla di piu. Never had she known such freedom, nor such unbounded joy.

Wednesday (11 October): On this day Justin began the happy practice of coming home for lunch. “Boy will the ladies be happy to see me,” he thought as the Yale transit bus chugged its way up Prospect hill, proclaiming its imminent demise at every lurch and halt. When he walked through the front door Julia raced up to him, pushed against his knees with all her might, and burst forth in a wild refrain of, “Daddy, go back to school!” Puzzled, Justin looked to Lia for some exegetical assistance, and to his great delight Lia explained that this was merely Julia’s new code for the lyrics of “I’m so glad when Daddy comes home.” When Justin asked Eli if she was glad to see him, she turned her head away in silence. The proud father immediately interpreted this gesture in the light of the ancient legal maxim, “silence gives consent.”

Thursday (12 October): Two persons representing an unnamed medical organization arrived at our house this day to check on Eli’s development and offer tips for helping her make up for the lost time she spent in the hospital. They asked Lia pertinent questions like, “What are your priorities?” or “Could you describe for us your goals for your daughter?” Then they gave helpful suggestions like, “It’s always best to begin with our own English authors before moving a child on to the giants of the Continent. We like to say that no one prepares a child for the German writers like that venerable Germanophile, George Eliot!”

Friday (13 October): A happy birthday to Justin’s dad and a happy Friday 13th to all those young persons looking for any excuse to tell one another nonsensical stories aimed at the production of tremendous mutual fright. The Yale Law School received a special visit from Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa., YLS ’56) who engaged the students in a ninety minute Q and A session. Justin could only admire the senator’s candor when, in response to the predictable barrage of “What-should-we-do-about-Iraq-North Korea-Iran, etc.?”, he turned to the assembled host and said, “Well, there’s a lot of brain power in this room. Any good ideas?” Many suggestions, alas; good ideas none—that is until Senator Specter, after a ringing peroration inviting us all to consider a life of service in the political realm, suggested that we break for lunch. For date night we started to watch Billy Budd, based of course on Melville’s tale now soundly ensconced in the legal cultural canon. The project was soon aborted in the name of an early bedtime, but Justin did go on to have a pleasant dream about a white whale; Lia dreamt of fighting for glory at Trafalgar and standing at Nelson’s side when the admiral fell.

Saturday (14 October): Justin spent much of the day in the YLS library ripping off a draft of a ten-page memo due Monday. He celebrated his first genuine foray into the world of legal writing by coming home to learn that our car battery is deader than the proverbial doornail. A kind neighbor helped us jumpstart it—a process that took twenty minutes and more—but after taking a long family drive to charge the battery, the bull fell into an unbreakable slumber upon our arrival home. Tomorrow, the bull undergoes a heart transplant. The best news of the day came, however, when it was over and Eli, who convincingly played the part of the insomniac during the earlier part of the week, slept resoundingly from 9 until 9, pausing only for a nocturnal snack around 3:30. The other exciting news of the week was the effectual completion of Julia’s potty-training. She is domesticated enough that twice during church today she went potty in the big church potty. This is big news indeed—in fact, Joseph McConkie once told a class one of us was in that there are really only four truly meaningful days in your life: (1) The day your oldest child is fully potty trained, (2) the day your oldest child is old enough to babysit the rest of your children, (3) the day your oldest son leaves on a mission, and (4) the day your oldest daughter gets married (it should be pointed out, lest these last two seem sexist, that the underlying assumption is that you’re glad to be rid of a son and sad to be bereft of a daughter—so the two are meaningful for quite different reasons). Anyhow, with this happy thought, we bid our readers farewell for another week.