Our asparagus bud

 Oh, asparagus season.  One of my favorite times of the year.  The delicate shoots pushing up fully formed from the ground.  They always make me think of Athena emerging from Zeus's head fully formed and ready to do battle.

We had Benjamin dedicated in church on Sunday.  I can't wait to show him the video some day of all the blessings he received from his church family on his dedication day.  I was reminded of one reason we decided to stay in Waco last year:  we wanted Benjamin to grow up (at least for a while) with people who already love him and support me and JB as we try to raise him.

A friend from Mexico (and father of three) came up to me after church with some additional words of encouragement that really spoke to me.  He has noticed that more than in Mexico, we seem to live, paradoxically, in a culture of scarcity:  a culture that reinforces the doubts that parents have about how they are raising children and leads to uncertainty and doubts that we don't always have the support structures to combat.  Some of you heard me criticize the pregnancy book What to Expect for preying on this kind of fear.  It fosters doubts about mothering by addressing itself to an audience it assumes has ONLY fears and trepidation about pregnancy instead of excitement, hope, and great joy.  And it communicates information by pretending to relieve fears that every mother has.

Anyway, my friend was trying to encourage me that we live lives of abundance, not scarcity, with God's help and surrounded by friends and family who really care for us.

How true.  And even so, even living as we do within a great support structure, we have to really TRY to allow ourselves to be dependent on each other. It's all too easy to be, superficially at least, independent.  When our pediatrician told us a few months ago that Benjamin needed supplemental formula to gain more weight, my instincts told me this was not the only way.  What did women do before formula was around if they weren't producing enough milk?  Other mothers nursed them.  I don't live in a place where this would be convenient enough to do (another mother to nurse Benjamin every two hours?), but it makes me long for the structures of dependence that would make that possible.  And I have been encouraged by a friend who produces plenty of milk who gave me some that she had frozen.

So for now Benjamin is drinking some supplemental formula, and I am just happy he is back at a healthy weight.  He'll start solids in a week or so, and I hope by then the asparagus is still in season.