"Pretty Much My Grandma," AKA, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Anita Rae Gross Etskovitz Miller almost didn't get born.

Seventy-three years ago, her mother, Ruth Gross, faced a decision of momentous proportions. At age 31 or thereabouts (she was a Russian immigrant to the United States, and birth certificates at that time were not part of the status quo in her country of origin), she had already given birth to four children. The oldest was 13, the youngest, almost nine. She and her husband worked hard to support their brood in their adopted country. They hosted relatives for weeks at a time, helping to pay for little things like the birth of a niece, and setting up family members in business so they, too, could grab hold of a corner of the American Dream. To top things off, Mrs. Gross suffered from severe asthma, and feared her unborn baby might "catch it."

A fifth child was unthinkable, and yet she was expecting.

In desperation, she sought out Dr. Teitelbaum, her trusted physician, and asked him for an abortion. The good doctor promised Anita's mother that her little one would not be asthmatic, and urged her to reconsider aborting. He and his childless wife offered to adopt the infant if Ruth felt she couldn't raise another child.

Anita's life was spared, and she grew up to become a gifted social worker who helped scores of families navigate the difficulties of dialysis (a medical intervention that could have saved the life of her father, had he lived in a different era; instead, he was taken by renal failure when Anita was 12); a master potter who commands hundreds of dollars for customized bowls and crockery, yet, with child-like earnestness, asks questions like, "It looks like corn, doesn't it?" when seeking an opinion on her artwork (Anita on her drawing ability: "I can make the clay work better than I can make a brush work. I could probably throw 50 pots if I had to, but that's easier than drawing one ear of corn!"); a gourmet cook whose table regularly hosts satiated family and friends; a seamstress whose skills range from repairing zippers to mending cane chairs; a homemaker who "wallpapered [her] house with tears" after being left alone to raise three pre-teens; and a steadfast friend to my family when she joined our neighborhood four months after my mom died and became, in the words of my young son, "pretty much my grandma."

She earned this title by doing things like cradling and reassuring my boy till her lap fell asleep when he cried for his granddad, who was the only grandparent he had left and had just been admitted to the hospital; sitting in a camp chair for two hours on a freezing night to watch my son play football; and refusing to paint over the doorjamb where she has faithfully tracked my kids' growth since the day she moved in.

What if Ruth's doctor had said yes?

"Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you...'" (Jeremiah 1:4-5)

"For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works... My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them." (Psalm 139:13-16)