it is so weird to be a parent--on the one hand, you spend a ridiculous amount of time dealing with the profoundly mundane tasks of day to day existence: laundry, meals, diapers and their contents, vacuuming, dressing, undressing, redressing, bathing, buckling, grocery stores, and so on. but then, on the other hand, you are confronted with the monumentally profound tasks of teaching two human beings about life: values, emotions, beliefs, society, beauty, injustice, justice, cruelty, suffering, goals, success, and a million other abstract and yet very real, very important concepts. long before one has to confront these challenges, one thinks about them--i was a wreck when i was pregnant, trying to codify my values into my own tablet of commandments -- ultimately i decided that the original 10 were pretty brilliant. but still hard to explain. ava asked me today who made me. i blurted "God, honey" (for a non-practicing Catholic, this surprised me to no end). and of course, she asked "who's god?" and then i was stuck. I finally answered, god is everything that is good in you and me and everyone. and left it at that. now i have a homework assignment. figure out god.