Grandpa Jones
I'm a grandfather! Edith "But I'm Not Jewish" Knoerl was born last night, around 8:00 PM. Mother, father, and grandfather are doing fine, but, after nearly killing Max with the cork from the first bottle of champagne, I engaged in celebratory rounds of drinking with Edie's six aunts and uncles and have a small headache today.
The texts were flying around last night, as we got status updates after the birth. When asked if Abbie was going to be able to feed her soon, my son-in-law texted, "Just waiting for the anesthesia to wear off to be able to walk." I responded, "Been there."
And yes, she's named after Edith Stein, the modern-philosopher-turned-nun who was killed by the monster Nazis (sorry for the redundancy). The passage below is from the introduction to The Science of the Cross, which I've been slowly getting through. It's one of the only serious works of modern Catholic metaphysical philosophy outside of the neo-Thomistic revival that I'm acquainted with. Balthasar waded into philosophical waters, and Gabriel Marcel wrote as a Catholic existentialist, but I'm not acquainted with others outside of neo-Thomism.
To be honest, it feels a little weird to be a grandfather, almost like my internal mental landscape has tilted a bit. It's hard to describe, and I'm not even convinced it's real (in the sense of having any permanency or significance), but something is there and I'm enjoying it.
