None of us followed in my Pappy's footsteps, though a few stumbled along at a distance. My father, a devoted veterinarian, came close. His specialty was orthopedic reconstruction, but he gathered strays like Brigitte Bardot. Not the resolute white coat his daddy was. I'm a massage therapist working in clinics and hospitals, most of the time with people struggling with illness or chronic pain. But I deliver comfort, not cures, and the gifts I've received in the line of duty have been totems of memorable kinship, like the tiny paper cup holding two Vicodin a hospital patient rejected as unnecessary after our session. (I had to refuse that particular gesture.) Others demonstrate satisfaction by going to sleep -- finally, for the first time in days -- or they tell me I am wonderful. Recently a woman reached way down into the crotch of the black leggings she was wearing under her hospital gown to fetch me a dollar bill.

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If she weren't a real person, one who really said "I don't give a shit," among other things, in a recent interview in Elle magazine, Teresa Heinz Kerry might be a figment of Aaron Sorkin's imagination -- a beloved political wife fluent in five languages, with brains, a hint of exposed cleavage, and no time for hand-wringing campaign operatives. If she were a "West Wing" regular, we would watch her character with delight, but also with a sense of doom, knowing that in the real world, the press and political consultants would crush her like a bug.

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In at least one case, however, it isn't distraction as much as confusion that paralyzes us as a new policy is ushered in and another is quietly abolished. Specifically, I refer to the repeal, announced Tuesday, of the Birth and Adoption Unemployment Compensation Rule, a measure that allows states to use unemployment benefits to pay workers who take unpaid leave to care for a new baby.

I tried to get my head around this one; but the sly contradictions and double double-crosses inherent in the announcement make it difficult. Basically, we have reached that point in the movie where the gullible patsy sits down, eyebrows knit, and says to the smirking psychopath: "Now let me get this straight ... " I will, in the role of spokesperson for gullible patsies nationwide, say it to President Bush (without implying, of course, that he is a smirking psychopath):

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"We knew the instant we met her that Darcy was going to crush him like a bug," said trust funder Cal Rumpmead, Barton's childhood nemesis. "We took bets on when it would happen." Added Rumpmead's wife, Tracie, a stay-at-home fashion muse, "The whole thing renewed my faith in juicy, mean-spirited gossip."

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Our seeds are tiny, manmade miracles promising more than just high yields, disease resistance and aesthetic perfection. We reconfigure the DNA of classic edibles to satisfy the whole gardener -- at the table and between meals.

Fresh this year!

Tomatoes:

Beefsteak favorites "Big Boy" and "Best Boy" are joined by "Rent Boy" and "Boy Toy," two new fellas of the beefcake variety. Red, firm and juicy, these perfect orbs are packed with potent pheromones (his or hers) and long-lasting breath-freshening agents. (Men: Try our "Old Boy" or "Growing Boy" varieties to meet special challenges. Ladies: Plant the "Lawn Boy" depilatory cherry tomato for early summer harvest.)

Melon:

Sweet and seedless "Miss Manners" cantaloupe is infused with prosciutto essence and synthetic endorphins to get your dinner party off the ground. Serve with alcoholic "Blotto" asparagus for lively conversation and forgiving taste buds. (Available in 99 proof for practical jokers.)

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-- Associated Press, Thursday, May 9, 2002

To: Rod Paige

From: The Public

Re: Sorts of Programs That Should Be Allowed

Dear Rod,

Those single-sex schools are a great idea for the young kids -- it's about time we stopped with the gender-role shenanigans. But come middle school and high school, Rod, you're going to want to wake up and smell the hormones. At that point, your segregation is going to need some fine-tuning. At that point, Rod, America's teenagers need to attend single-clique schools.

To wit:

Stoner High
No facilities needed beyond a parking lot, plywood skateboad ramps and a vending machine. Field trips redundant. Academic emphasis on political science, cartooning and fashion design. Phowl, the school jam band, is open to all students prepared for heavy tour schedule. Footbag and hacky-sack tutors available at no extra cost.

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As last I have the proof I need. While so many others have been satisfied with faith and a personal knowledge of his/her mysterious ways, I have waited in vain for a sign. And now, at last, it has come. I have finally joined the fold, led to its comforting embrace by a nude dancer.

Her name is Christina Silvas, a 24-year-old single mother of a 5-year-old in Rancho Cordova, Calif. And as is often the case with vessels of divine intervention, these last few days have not been easy for her. Less than a month before the end of school, Silvas was told by her pastor -- Rick Cole of the Capital Christian Center -- that her daughter could no longer attend the church kindergarten and that she and her daughter were no longer welcome at the Assembly of God church where they have been loyal parishioners. The problem? Silvas' job as a dancer at Gold Club Centerfolds.

"If you choose to do the wrong thing willfully, then God's word instructs me as to what my responsibility is," Cole told the Sacramento Bee newspaper. "I need to be faithful to my calling."

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Certain species of animals have achieved iconic status (the lion, the bull, the dove) that almost transcends their animalness. Consider the horse. A glimpse of a galloping stallion stirs up all sorts of feelings related to freedom, power and independence -- even for those of us who have never ridden a horse. That's why a picture of a man in a cowboy hat, or better yet, a guy wearing such a hat while perched on a horse, is still one of the most potent images in advertising -- for both products and politicians.

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On another page of the same newspaper, there was a story about a 30-year-old woman, destined by genetic inheritance to suffer from early-onset Alzheimer's disease, who gave birth to a baby girl who was screened as an embryo to make sure she did not carry the same rare gene. This was meant to be a triumphant announcement, a new feat of reproductive technology reported with pride by the woman's doctors in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA). But in many ways, it is one more story about the victimization of children, another report of the powerful deriving satisfaction from the powerless in a self-serving act of cruelty.

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The president's exhortations, which added up to a kindly prescription worthy of Mister Rogers, overlooked the complexity of our trauma, ignored the need of many Americans to actively express their patriotism and failed to acknowledge the rare opportunity Bush now has to propose a national war effort that could tap our fear and anger in ways that cripple our enemies, unite hawks and doves and preserve the foundation -- freedom, independence, ingenuity, resolve -- of America's power.

The great abyss between the gravity of the nation's crisis and the banality of Bush's address brought to mind the 1863 dispatch of American diplomat Charles Francis Adams to blue-blood Earl Russell: "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war."

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Dear Lance,

I know that there are a lot of folks out there who want a piece of you. They want your face on a box, your churning quads on TV, they want your hearty endorsement on the hang tag for a pair of shorts.

And then you've got people who need you. Your wife and your kids, of course, but also the legion of cancer sufferers and survivors who hold and burnish with desire your story of beating testicular cancer, of slamming cells that spread to your lungs and your brain, and then trumping the killer with feats of proportional gravity -- only better.

You are America's favorite hope fiend. And you are, in a way, the highest-paid employee of the United States Postal Service, which spent an estimated $6 million this year to sponsor your professional cycling team.

Which brings me to the reason for this letter: The U.S. Postal Service needs you. And this time, it's not about the bike. It's about courage, faith, attitude and strength -- all of which you happen to have loads of. And it's about anthrax, which, fortunately, you do not have. (We hope.) Letter carriers, mail sorters -- a total of 800,000 workers whose greatest public distinction may be the term "going postal" and the mindless mayhem that implies -- are hurting. Two have died, no one knows how many have been exposed to anthrax spores and so far the most salient advice they've received from their employers has been the suggestion to wash their hands.

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But I can read these. And I do. All of them. I go in order of how the pictures hit me. I might start with a strapping trader who is shining -- he's glistening -- in a photo obviously taken at his wedding. ("He loved telling jokes, and he was not above stealing other people's anecdotes and improving them.") Then I might move on to the mother of four whose snap was taken on the fly, maybe at a special occasion in a restaurant, maybe by her eldest son. ("The boys knew that malingering in bed beyond that signal, unless you were really, truly sick, would not be wise.")

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Portfolio

Flag: An American Story
A gallery of photographs from the book.

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Days later there was talk of an event in New York led by a Buddhist monk dedicated to "embracing anger" in the wake of terrorist attacks. This was funny too, especially the peace and love jokes and the part about Judy Collins.

More hilarity is no doubt in store as the Worldwide Sisterhood Against Terrorism and War unleashes its press release (signed by Jane Fonda, 'natch!, among others), calling for "an act as positive as the terrorist act was negative," specifically "a massive and immediate airlift of food and medicine for the people of Afghanistan." Most important, says the document, "Use your own head and heart to prevent a war that can only lead to more terrorism."

It is not hard to imagine the barking response of self-declared American realists: "Yeah? Bring it on!"

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We will attempt to run as many of these images as possible, as long as they come in a form we can handle: e-mail or regular mail. The mailing address is: MothersPhotos; c/o Salon.com, 22 Fourth St., San Francisco CA 94103. (Sorry, we cannot return items sent this way.) Check the Image Conscious directory to find examples of the work posted so far. And please, when you send in an image and a caption, include a few words about yourself that we can use as a short biography in the feature.

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The details are going to be different in every instance. Age and proximity will define or refine a child's experience of the disaster. So will everything else that we can think of or haven't thought of yet. But in the telling there will have been an element of surrender, of powerlessness that we never anticipated. After we march with poker faces through details of varying specificity, we are called upon to explain, and this is where things get away from us and rip big black holes in the tidy universes that we try to maintain for our children. Where is our complacent spin? What makes it possible for us to end with the traditional coda, "I will keep you safe," and mean it?

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Which would be OK. Especially when you compare that stuff to the hardwired weirdness of boys -- or the irritating psychic accessories of "enlightened" men. No, the problem here is not primal or deep. But it is irritating -- deeply and primally irritating.

You see, feminists have forgotten their manners.

Certain among us -- you know who you are -- have been chiseling away with righteous determination at a set of commandments, ranking the personal sins of feminists with paternalistic fervor and demanding contrition from transgressors. Marriage is heresy. (See "Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique" by Jaclyn Geller). Modesty is a commodity. (Demure contrarian femmes, led by Wendy Shalit, give this lecture). Eye shadow is good. (Bitch, Bust.) Abortion is better. (Call it a human right and pretty much everybody signs on.) Wrong choices, bad choices -- it is easy to fall afoul of the new feminist law. What happened to the simple old feminist embrace of choice itself, and the belief that for women, as well as other "living things," it should be free?

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The case, which involves a 34-year-old man who has nine children by four women and owes $25,000 in support, divided the Wisconsin court along gender lines. The four male justices weighed in with a slightly paternalistic opinion in which they agreed that to bar David Oakley from having more children is a reasonable way to force him to pay child support for the kids he already has. The three women on the court opposed the order, citing Oakley's constitutional right to procreate.

Oakley's lawyer, meanwhile, told the New York Times that he is mulling an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the basis that the ruling could have a ruinous effect on reproductive rights, "specifically that a class of individuals will be limited to the number of children based upon financial resources."

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One can almost hear the lusty cry echoing from the smoky trenches as a dispatch is rushed past volleys of haughty rhetoric and threats of damnation to those of us cowering at home. The document, sent from the highest medical official of the land, is titled "The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior" -- a name so evocative of dedication, urgency and honor that it makes one's heart swell. We reflexively imagine the embattled Dr. David Satcher in a candlelit tent pitched on the banks of the Potomac, scribbling hundreds of words with obsessive diligence. Not a moment to lose.

Indeed, our bearded and bespectacled hero is at this moment locked into the crosshairs of conservative bayonets. He has rejected their sacred belief that appropriate sex education must not mention sex. And the most inflamed among them might possibly be Satcher's own commander in chief, George W. Bush, who is reported by at least one senior official to have little confidence in Satcher, whose report angers him greatly. (Bush's confidence, it seems, is in his own approach of withholding information, employed so effectively with his own children and the issue of alcohol.)

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