The Messy Building of Something Enduring. Or the Enduring Building of Something Messy. It Depends.

We watched the first two parts of the HBO series "John Adams" tonight and I thought it was pretty good. But aside from my critical evaluation of TV shows, which isn't worth much, I was also thinking about the nature of history and how messy it is when it's made--how little the people involved know at the time about what they're doing, really, or how it will all turn out. And then I looked up at this big new house we're in, and at the bedrooms doors of the two little girls who were sleeping upstairs, and I thought about how none of the present moment could have been foreseen by me or by David when we went out on that first date. And yet here we are 14 years later, a family. It's a messy process which never seems to end, this creation of a family, and you don't know how it will all turn out.

But somehow it seems worth doing.