Book of Bulmash, chapter 101
Illustration by The Boy, inspired by "Least I Could Do: Beginnings" comic
- After recovering from her youngest child's latest tomfoolery, the mother cast her thoughts back to a time nearly lost in the mists of memory:
- To the days in which she parented only one child.
- Then were the days of tenderness and learning, every milestone a first for mother and babe.
- The first baby was full of smiles and musical burblings, and he snuggled unto his mother like a champ.
- Yet the mother found herself seized by anxiety.
- For she delighted so deeply in her child that she feared she would burden him with her affection, yea, to the point of smothering.
- The mother and father discussed the possibility of bringing another babe into the home.
- For it seemed to them that parenting was, all things considered, not THAT hard.
- Soon the new babe arrived, an infant who soon grew robust in size and noise.
- Then the parents did learn a hard lesson, that two children are far more challenging than one,
- And also that a second child may reveal a will strong enough to try the patience of ten adults.
- So after yet another difficult bedtime, the mother soothed her frayed nerves with the fruit of the vine and the cocoa bean.
- Suddenly, she found herself thunderstruck with the irony of her children's unconquerable wills, in the face of her futile attempts at discipline.
- "Verily," the mother murmured, "I have done this thing unto myself."
