This week a friend told me that my encouragement to continue breastfeeding last spring made a difference. She and her daughter are still enjoying that close bond. This surprised me. The notion that any brief conversation with a young mother had an impact seems less likely than my efforts to rebuke the onslaught of pollution.

Yet miraculously to me, it did. I am a fan of holding babies, and the miracle of meeting their needs merely by cradling them to my breast.  Yet my days as a La Leche League leader have ended, and with it my ongoing arena for supporting the mother baby bond. When I overhear women talking about attachment parenting, or the family bed, or extended nursing, I am mostly silent. Much as I cherished those years, my stories are mine. These new mothers need to craft their own. 

I wonder too about whether it matters to talk with fresh couples about the adjustment to married life. My experiences seem outdated, having fallen in love during a culture in which modesty was still in vogue. The rules popular in the eighties seem to have been shelved, and I have not figured out the new set yet, except to notice that I am confused. 

I knew what to do when my babies were small. Hold them. But the roles are less concise with adult children, and I cannot so simply right their world. Still maybe that is, somehow, as it should be.  

Because I notice that God is still a fan of holding me.