This is a picture of the beautiful woman responsible for blessing/genetically rescuing the children whose images you see littered throughout this blog. She is the finest woman I know. Most people are mystified by her decision to consort with likes of me (I include myself in that number), but she does, and I'm keeping her.
Chesterton says that limiting yourself to one woman is a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to see one at all. He was thinking of my wife when he wrote that.
He also had this to say about the "drudgery" of motherhood. It applies equally well:
To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, sheets, cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.
--"The Emancipation of Domesticity" from Chesterton's 1910 classic What's Wrong with the World.
This is a beautiful picture of her.
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