Birth of Ezra on Valentine’s Day is new ‘family holiday’
February 15th, 2008, 4:50 pm · Post a Comment · posted by lawngriffiths
Our daughter, the kindergarten teacher, worked her full day Thursday at Dreaming
Summit Elementary School in Avondale, though her labor pains started around 11 a.m. Concentrating on more than 25 kindergartners while hurting has to be an ordeal.
Just before 6 p.m. she and husband Nate were headed to Banner Estrella Medical
Center three miles down the road, just into Phoenix. Their son, Ezra, was born at 7:30 p.m. It was a relatively easy birth of their second child, without an epidural. My wife and I arrived from Tempe just as his head was emerging. Ezra was born within two minutes after our arrival and tipped the scales at 7 pounds, 5 ounces.
I observed the birth of my two children and two of my three grandchildren, and its always awesome and amazing how a gray, wriggling, slimy body turns to a pink, little human in just a few minutes.
Ezras father predicted a Valentines Day baby, though he was due Feb. 23. Interestingly, his sister, Ella, was born on the 4th of July 2006. Their mom was born on a Halloween, and this year their father has his birthday on Thanksgiving. So the four of them have to share the birthdays with holidays that are mostly known for gluttony and sweets. One friend noted this: One is a little pumpkin, one is a little firecracker and one is a little cupid. What does that make the father?
My wife says she might be responsible for the gravitation to holidays: She was born on a Good Friday.
We are glad they werent multiple births, something that runs in the family: I am a twin, my maternal grandmother (a twin) was in a family of 11 children that had three sets of twins. And my father-in-law was a triplet.
Our son and wife expect their second child next month, also a boy.
Our new grandson has a stalwart Bible name Ezra. Its different, as baby names go. Ezra was the priest and scholar of the Jewish people revered as the restorer and the last author of the Torah after the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylonia. The Encyclopedia Americana says there is no consensus as to when he lived and that some scholars believe Ezra was a fictional creation. Ezra is the 15th book of the standard Bible, between 2nd Chronicles and Nehemiah. It contains history of the Jews from 538 B.C.E to 432 B.C.E. My thick reference, The New Encyclopedia of Judaism says rabbinical tradition holds Ezra in great respect. He is considered to have been on a level with Moses in his knowledge of the Torah. Another source called him like a minister for Jewish affairs to teach the Jewish law and ensure that the Jews kept the Persian law.
Our prayer is that Ezra has a rich life, a life of purpose and meaning, one filled with love and learning. He enters a world of peril and in a nation finding itself through troubled dark times. Yet, we are full of anticipation of the adventure for his family getting to know him, enveloping him into their lives and to heaping love onto him. New life is an unfathomable blessing. May God make Ezra an instrument of good and that he will know freedom and justice and can grow up and excel in a day when this world is finally capable of recognizing how precious life is and what true peace can bring.