"Miracle of Birth"

The photo was taken before our daughter's Christmas tree.

Sydney M. Williams

More Essays from Essex

“Miracle of Birth”

December 27, 2025

 

“History isn’t just a passing of the torch or an accumulation

of wisdom. It should be a celebration of miracles.”

                                                                                                                                Leo Morris (1947-2023)

                                                                                                                                Commentary, December 8, 2021

 

For much of the past year I have been in a foul mood. It has had nothing to do with hearth, home, politics or the market. It is because, with the celebration of our nation’s semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026, I decided to see if I could determine the names of all my antecedents going back to my fourth-great grandparents, those who would have been alive during the American Revolution[1]. At least two of that generation fought for Independence – Jonathon Peele (1731-1809) of Salem, Massachusetts and William Sawyer (1749-1822) of Bolton, Massachusetts. I was able to come up with the names of my 64 four-great grandparents, but it was no easy task.

 

While I had a head start, in that my sister Betsy had done most of the work several years ago, I still had to research dusty genealogies, search the internet, check the spelling of names and confirm dates. The job was laborious, hard on the eyes and tiring to what little brain I have left. I am happy not to be British and have to go back to the Magna Carta.

 

But as I was coming up with the 126 names that preceded me (going back those six generation), I marveled at the odds of ever being born – the right people meeting and getting married, the date and time of conception, and the race between millions of sperm to fertilize a specific egg – the latter reminding me of the 1972 Woody Allen movie, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, especially the sequence where he plays a sperm racing to reach the egg.

 

According to a search on Google, the odds of anyone being born are “astronomically low, estimated at around one in 400 trillion.”  For me, for example, if Anna Pope had not married Benjamin Williams on September 20, 1745 in Taunton, Massachusetts, if Noah Webster had not married Rebecca Greenleaf on October 26, 1789 in Boston, or if Obadiah Hotchkiss had not married Mercy Perkins on November 15, 1758 in New Haven, I would not be here, nor would any of my children or grandchildren. Keep in mind, when considering the miracle of life our genetic makeup goes back to when life first began.

 

The conclusion: we are fortunate to be here. We should never take life for granted. We should do our utmost to live respectful and honorable lives, thankful for what was gifted us and to recognize how blessed we are to be alive. Births are, indeed, miracles, and now my mood has improved. So, as you ring in the New Year give a toast – silent perhaps – to your ancestors, to all those who made your life possible.

 

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[1] Two of my 64 four-great grandparents died before or during the Revolution – Rebekah (Minot) Prescott in 1761 and Elizabeth (Ruggles) Chandler in 1774. For two, Peter Kemp and Betty (Daniel) Kemp, I was unable to find dates, apart from the fact they were married on July 26, 1770 in Middlesex County, Virginia. And two were born and died in Ireland.

"Mail - Missing are Letters"

Astute readers will recall that I wrote a similar essay a year ago, entitled “The Lost Art of Writing Letters.” But this is a subject that bears repetition.

 

Here in Essex we are having another beautiful late summer day.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Mail – Missing are Letters!”

September 14, 2024

 

“In an age like ours, which is not given to letter writing, we

forget what an important part it used to play in people’s lives.”

                                                                                              attributed to Anatole Broyard (1920-1990)

                                                                                              literary critic and editor, The New York Times

 

Personal letters are as rare as a Woody Allen smile. I love letters, but, sadly, I don’t often write them and even less frequently receive them. I have hordes of old family letters and once edited a book, Dear Mary, which consisted of letters between my parents during the Second World War. I do have copies of letters written to each of my ten grandchildren on their tenth birthdays. I have a collection of E. B. White’s letters and Philip Stanhope’s (Lord Chesterfield) Letters. I have framed letters from Noah Webster, Harriet Beecher Stowe, T.S. Eliot, Gideon Welles, and P.G. Wodehouse, reflecting bygone eras. This absence of letters saddens me. They once played a big role in my life, and I am sure in yours.

 

Recently, when I stopped by the mailroom the pickings were typical – a couple of bills, two requests for money, an unwanted catalogue, and a statement. The bills were put aside, the statement filed, the catalogue recycled, and one of the requests was tabled. The other was shredded. There were no letters, not even a postcard. Going to the mailbox has lost the breathless anticipation I remember from my youth.

 

In boarding school, opening my mailbox was fraught with emotion. Would anything be there? It was thrilling if the envelope had the cursive handwriting that only a fifteen-year-old girl could master – a girl met the previous summer, or at a dance with a sister school – a girl whom I would have liked to call a girlfriend, but I was too shy. More often the envelope bore my mother’s distinctive handwriting, with a message admonishing me to study hard and stay out of trouble. Those of us who served in the armed forces remember the excitement of mail call – We would gather around the corporal who dispensed the mail. Names were called. There were days – perhaps most – when I retreated to my bunk empty-handed. On others, I was happy. Since I had met the girl who is now my wife, it was her letters I cherished. 

 

I have always liked letters. They offer a snapshot of the author. Tucked away, my wife and I have letters from our parents and grandparents. They help us better understand them. Letters were once inherent to our culture. Twenty-one of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament are epistles or letters. The Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium is a collection of 124 letters by the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger, written toward the end of his life in 65AD. But letters are rare in this internet age – e-mail, social media posts, and texts have taken their place. Some argue that the telephone, or even the telegraph, foretold the end of letters. 

 

That may be true, but if so their death was prolonged. My parents and grandparents communicated primarily by mail. A sister who died twenty-seven years ago was known as “the last of the letter writers.” But now the end seems to be finally here. In his poem “Birches,” Robert Frost ended with this line: “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” One could do worse than be a writer of letters. Someone will be happy.