Notebook
Hoyt, Robert G.
but not all, of the work's original luster, was restored), the work is a triumph. What is most striking about the set is the figure of Christ--he simultaneously beckons to Thomas to touch...
...he entered history the day after Sarah had enjoyed a baby shower in her honor attended by numerous Boyles and Hoyts...
...So much for origins...
...This Christmas, as every Christmas, we need such art, such realism, such recognition...
...I don't want to...
...Pause for exultation...
...18 3/4 inches...
...but she warmed me more than I warmed her...
...Andrew is the newly minted son of Susan and Michael Boyle...
...Even more appropriately, she'll be on hand for Christmas, when all babies are seen anew, and rightly, as blessings, gifts, miracles...
...5.03 pounds...
...Here is power and vulnerability perfectly wed: Christian theology in its highest and most graphic expression...
...Sarah's siblings have cause to worry about her...
...She was placid and solemn...
...And Sarah is beautiful...
...But there are countervailing factors as well...
...This was a way of leading into an improbable announcement: Mig and I were (gulp...
...For the very same reasons, I do want to write the column...
...Think about it, as did my youngest grandchild, Timmy, four years old...
...When the baby was placed in Mig's arms we looked at her, wept a bit, then at each other and agreed that she wasn't Elizabeth or Maureen or Ermegilda...
...on first meeting Sarah he said, "She's my aunt...
...Without that pressure, she might have reached college age sort of anonymously...
...Mig and I have some interactive neuroses that may be interesting to counselors but won't be to Sarah...
...But woe to us who cause others to stumble...
...One vexing issue was resolved when the adoption agency told us (at the last possible moment) that we couldn't walk away with our daughter--she might not even be our daughter--unless and until we gave her a name...
...The way out of this impasse, I hope, is to borrow from two light-hearted communications distributed by my wife, Mig Boyle, and me, having to do with the Big Happenings, and then to touch ever so lightly on matters of moment, depth, and meaning...
...About the baby' s future, we predicted that, having already worked a couple of miracles (on us, in absentia), she will be "the first pope to be canonized in her own lifetime, along with her husband...
...Christ's powerful right hand nearly dances above Thomas's head...
...At that point we hadn't even seen our soon-to-be daughter, but we could give some standard data: Born four-and-a-half weeks early...
...On the record, I am not now and have never been a model father...
...Birth mother twentytwo, Irish-Catholic background, already a mother but unable to provide for a second child...
...Thanks for coming...
...The first of our two messages was a memorandum addressed to the "Liturgy and Liquefaction Coalition," my nickname for a group that has been gathering in its members' homes once a month or so for 1o, these several decades, to worship, talk, dine, and hoist a few...
...Again, cute...
...But most remarkable is that the whole figure of Christ seems to be recoiling from the piercing pain about to be inflicted by Thomas' s touch...
...doing well...
...NOTEBOOK HOME FOR CHRISTMAS THE BIRTH OF A FAMILY t's my turn to write a "Notebook...
...Substantially reduced postal rates would be available for the holidays, the Royal Mail announced, for unsealed greeting cards containing no more than five words in addition to the printed rues4:17 December 1993 Commonweal...
...from Scotland, when the hand-written notice caught my eye...
...So much for cuteness and kitsch...
...It was correct that she arrived in time for Thanksgiving...
...She doesn't yet know she has cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and--most significantly (to me)--a set of siblings: my six children by a previous marriage, some of whom have offspring of their own who are, astonishingly, Sarah's nephews and nieces...
...There is ample reason for some angst...
...Mig said we had to see her first...
...too much is happening in my life and what's happening is too utterly primal, many-sided, unplumbable...
...She hasn't even seen a dog yet...
...What is most striking about the set is the figure of Christ--he simultaneously beckons to Thomas to touch his wounded side and blesses the recalcitrant Apostle...
...The memo asked the other members to accept a new body into the group--even though "she has not yet been shriven" and "does not yet have a full name...
...Sarah enters not one but two wide and wonderful families and a circle of friends beyond compare...
...ROBERT G. HOYT A CHRISTMAS NOTE FROM SCOTLAND BE OF FEW WORDS HER MAJESTY'S WAR ON VERBOSITY here I was, standing in line at the post office again, my arms full of letters to send home to the U.S...
...It doesn't adequately clarify the subtext...
...For the nonce, at least, we have incredibly deft and gentle live-in help...
...I was able, with effort, to outstare her...
...adopting a baby girl...
...For the most part, you the reader will have to read between the lines to penetrate the persiflage...
...With the benefit of this experience, and with the help of several amanuenses, Sarah was able to inform Andrew of things to come: "I've had occasion to observe at VERY close range that you have a wonderful wide family who will google and coo at you and hand you around from lap to lap and tickle your toes and pat your head and feed your face and wipe your bottom and make funny faces till you'll wish you were back in the womb...
...Or, in full, "Sarah Boyle Hoyt," a name first put to formal use at the heading of a Fed X message accepting another new arrival, one Andrew Michael Boyle, into her cousinship...
...It was perfectly obvious that she was "Sarah...
...I'm seventy-one-goingonseventy-two...
...Welcome, Sarah...
...I've just interrupted this writing to go and hold Sarah...
...God indeed has come to share our sufferings...
Vol. 120 • December 1993 • No. 22
