Family

Here's something you don't see everyday.  Noman thanks God that he sees it annually when he visits Spain, or when he receives a family picture from his good friends Chema and Rosa.  A sight like this confirms that God hasn't given up on humanity's future.

Josemaria (Chema) Postigo of Segovia is one of twelve children.  Rosa Pich of Barcelona is one of sixteen.  They both grew up knowing the warmth of a big family and the security of knowing that they weren't alone in this big world.  As you can see, their marriage has been fruitful.

Nofamily has enjoyed the Postigo-Pich's friendship for decades--something else Noman thanks God for--and has a number of Nochildren the same age as theirs.  They befriended Nofamily when it lived in Barcelona between 1992 and 2002.  Noman knows of no people more generous, self-giving, friendly, open and fun-loving than the Postigo-Pichs, which perhaps you can make out on the children's faces.  Rosa is indefatigable, indomitable and fearless.  Chema is the kind of guy who will offer you an arm or a leg and mean it.  He is happy and big-hearted--even in the face of health problems and more than his fair share of troubles--the way that Noman thought all Spaniards were, before discovering that Spaniards, like Americans, came in all varieties.

Rosa's parents were treasures.  Noman was only in their family home a few times while both were alive, once on vacation in the Pyrenees.  Nevertheless, his overwhelming recollection of Carmina, Rosa's mother, was of a woman who always looked to serve others, to make them more comfortable, to see that they had what they needed.  She was kind and alert, a real dynamo.  Her husband said of her that "she was in every sense a unique woman, kind, happy, with an incredible and inexhaustible capacity to devote herself to everyone and everything." When people told her to slow down and relax, she replied that she would have plenty of time to rest in heaven.  Her heart gave out while she sewed school robes (batas) for a girl's club.  Noman visited her casket at the wake, intending to pray for her, and spontaneously began to pray to her for his Nofamily.  He has never been more certain of a person's sanctity.  

Rosa's father, Rafael, was a force of nature.  He was an extraordinary man: intelligent, curious, far-sighted yet detail-oriented, industrious, thoughtful, dedicated, hard-driving, humorous, gracious, and wildly generous.  He was not the type to sit around lamenting what wasn't; rather, he was a prime mover who made certain that what needed to be, became, and was.  During the decades that Noman knew him, he was intensely interested in, and dedicated to, children's formation: personal, intellectual, humanistic, cultural and spiritual.  Towards the end of his life, Rafael was very curious about home-schooling--a non-existent option in Spain.  Rafael was a people-person extraordinaire, and a great man.  Noman is blessed to have known him, thankful for the time they spent talking, and lucky to have learned from him.

The picture at top is testimony to Rafael and Carmina's love and dedication, and of Chema's parents, especially his mother's.  And, each of those children has the same generosity beating in his or her heart.  Under the tutelage of population controllers and eugenicists, people have come to think of families this size as weird, even unhealthy.  They have been instructed to want only one or two children, if any; they have been told that children are a one-way ticket to poverty.  Social-psychology has been marshaled to disparage openness to procreation as irresponsible, selfish and even threatening to the planet.  Pity, and hogwash. Each of those children is going to fill the world with love, happiness and consideration for others, which they have learned from growing up with many sibling and generous parents.  Incidentally, they are also going to buy houses, clothing, food, education and all sorts of goods and services that will provide jobs and income for providers, and make the economy hum with prosperity.  People are the source of wealth, not poverty.  Compare those benefits to alarums about carbon footprints.

Noman thinks the choice is clear, and encourages everyone to procreate early and often.