8:203) Hope O`Keeffe 27-MAY-98 16:44

Always the comparisons. Why can't you be as popular as Ruth, as entertaining as Tom, as outgoing as Ed? And for them, why can't you be as smart as Hope? Parents, grandparents, teachers going through the litany of names before they got to the right one. (The hardest for Tom, I think -- how the class laughed when his teachers called on "HopeRuthTom.") Ruth inevitably dating boys I had crushes on. It took adulthood to realize that we all have the same genes to be smart, popular, entertaining, outgoing. Too many years to break out of the boxes they put us in. (And still, when Ed's wife and I were due at the same time, it was so important to Ed that his baby be born first: "Just once I'd like to beat you.") How do the boxes get built? I watch my boys, so very different. Aaron is a firstborn: manipulative, creative, cuddly and fiercely independent, deadly serious yet addicted to puns and wordplay, swinging between wildly outgoing and neurotically shy. Jeffrey is the baby: athletic, easy-going, fearless to the edge of recklessness, quick to see the humor in any situation, stretching up his arms to any smiling stranger for a hug.

Aaron is my miracle boy, born after years of infertility; Jeffrey is heart of my heart, the chosen baby at a time when a baby made no sense.

"Who do you love best, Mommy? Me or Jeffrey?"

"I love you because you are you. I love Jeffrey because he is Jeffrey."

No boxes.