I’m pleased to report that Charlotte is starting life on a good, if tiny, foot. Or should I say, on good, if tiny, feet? Regardless, I’ll say one thing: This little girl has impeccable timing. She appeared on earth earlier today, at something like three in the morning, the very same day on which her maternal grandmother, i.e., her mother’s mother, i.e., my sister’s mother, i.e., my mother, was scheduled to arrive in town.

Good for you, Charlotte, because I don’t know what would have happened if you had decided to be late. I can just picture Grandma (and two of your great -- and I mean that -- aunts) spending day after day way down South -- “It’s really, uh, different here.” -- waiting for your arrival, only to have her return, empty-handed, so to speak, to horse country, thinking of something to tell the girls from the knitting, spinning, sewing, weaving, and needle-pointing guilds, those non-union, and probably largely Republican, collectives whose members have spent something like six months living on every little nugget about your formation and impending arrival.

Let me tell you, Charlotte, Grandma and her friends, along with your parents, your other grandparents, your uncles, aunts, cousins, and other relatives, collectively sighed a collective sigh of relief today.

So, welcome to the world, precious one. There was so much we wanted to get done before you got here -- I don’t know, stuff dealing with innocent little kids and poverty, hunger, abuse, disease, and so forth, the kind of thing that, thank God, will never affect you directly. Please know, always, that we, most of us anyway, did our best.