The Good Portion

Like every self-respecting girl of my generation, and probably every other kind of girl too, I loved the Brady Bunch. Every Friday evening for five years (decades in little-girl-time) centered around it. Like every other little girl I knew, I wanted to be Marsha, the oh-so-cool and beautiful older sister, or at the very least to be as cute as little Cindy, who everyone adored. Even to be Jan, the relatively plain middle daughter, would be better than the knobby-jointed, crooked-haired, four-eyed, bad-toothed, unpopular child I saw looking back at me from every mirror. Raised an only child (my siblings having grown up and moved away before my earliest memories), I envied those sibling relationships. I wanted cute brothers to fight with but who would secretly really love me, and would defend me when kids picked on me at school. I wanted a family name that would escort me immediately into the attention of every teacher and student who heard it. And, of course, I wished for such parents:...

How is it that we do not come into being as individual humans until atoms combine for the formation of our own unique DNA, and yet do not cease to exist as individual souls when our genetic material has long since decomposed into atoms which have long since become a part of the genetic creation that is a new human being?

I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chatted all the way; But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow, And ne’er a word said she; But, oh! The things I learned from her, When sorrow walked with me. -Robert Browning Hamilton Thanks to Simplemann