The Rose Distilled Letitia Lew

Have you ever thought about having children? I've come to realize that most girls assume they will be mothers sometime in the nebulous future, but I used to be bewildered that my peers could say things like, "If I have a son, I'll name him Jude." Thoughts like that have never occurred to me, but I began penning my thoughts down in a burst of youthful feminism after reading "A Midsummer Night's Dream" when I was 14. 'Why do we yearn to be "the rose distilled"?'

Perhaps as the eldest of four siblings and nineteen squalling grandchildren, I grew up with an innate dislike of kids. I know this places me down there with cantankerous old men and evil minds plotting global enslavement, but I must have been really warped to sign up for a reading program with my classmates.

In retrospect, it wasn't absolute torture. The kids even seemed to enjoy my animated readings. But most of all, it was enlightening. In the middle of "Jack and the Beanstalk" I would digress into how deforestation is harming the Earth, which of course fell on uncomprehending ears. But here is the crux: it is precisely their lack of understanding which frustrates me. I wish they knew the wonders and...