Our obligation is to live a life pleasing to the Lord. That doesn’t mean that we must live according to the fashions of the Christian community. If our true obligations boil down to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God,” then we don’t necessarily have to be Bible scholars or teachers or even “involved” in some particular church ministry.

Cora has more and more words that she can say now. Actually, she has more and more words that she wants to use, but the same small number of sounds that she can make. As a result, she makes her few sounds and thinks that she’s saying the words themselves. Imagine a vocabulary of 20 words and only the sounds ba, buh, da, dada, hmm, mmn, muh, mum, and nnh to communicate them with. “Mmn” means yes and “nnh” means no, and the rest are up for grabs. Needless to say, Tee and I spend a good bit of time with Cora in conversations that go something like this:

Cora: Muh.

Tina: Oh, you want your mommy?
Cora: Nnh. Muh.
Jason: What’s muh?
Cora: (starting to fuss) Muh? Muh? Muh?
Tina: Milk? You want your bottle?
Cora: Mmn! Muh.

Anyway, I got to wondering what Cora’s weblog entries would look like, were she so inclined to write them. I took a stab at creating a weblog for her here.

When Cora was tiny and I’d hold her bottle for her, she’d often grab one of my fingers in her hand. It wasn’t much of a grip, but it was cute and I was happy to have my baby hold onto me. It felt like she was claiming me, and I was thrilled to have her demonstrate her love, however simply.

Many things about Cora have changed in the last year, and one of them is her feeding routine. She doesn’t often take a bottle anymore, and when she does she lets us know that she can hold it herself, thank you very much. It seems the routine of having my baby explicitly claim me as her own each night has passed.

It seemed temporary enough at the time, but her hold on me was more permanent than I had realized, and here it is months later and I’m still thinking about it. I’m still in her grip. I think I always will be, even though she’s fallen out of the habit of reminding me.

I can imagine a novel where poignant moments for the reader rise from the everyday activity of the characters. A finger-gripping infant could go into the first chapter somewhere to symbolize the dynamics of a relationship between parent and child. That grip could be used to explain why the parent works so hard, forgives so much, and loves so completely.

If the novel were careful to finish what it began, then I’m sure we’d eventually find the grown child hovering over the bed of the elderly parent. Even after so much has changed, their hands would still brush from time to time, saying I love you.