Atticus Stuart Brent, named for a just man in a book I once read, was born on the Feast of All Saints at 1 p.m., a healthy little boy with blond hair and the puzzled dark blue eyes all newborns have.

He is no more special to me than any of my other children, except in knowing that he is the last and thus specially dear.

What is extraordinary are the circumstances that surrounded his birth -- circumstances that quickly spread from our family circle to a small circle of friends to the doctors and nurses at the hospital to the world at large through the news -- because of the special challenges and gallantry of the woman who gave birth to our "Boo."

A gestational surrogate is not a "rent-a-womb" nor, usually, a profiteer. She's a woman who often has given birth easily and wants to do that for people who cannot produce their own children. Often, gestational surrogates are caring, kind, thoughtful people. Often, they are professional, kind and friendly. They usually make upwards of $20,000 because what they do is natural, but can be dangerous and difficult.

Then there is Arletta Adkins Bendschneider, who, two years ago, offered to try to help us create a baby from a frozen embryo, for little more than the expenses that she would incur, because she felt she was meant to do this.

She had a protective, kind, handsome, seemingly supportive husband and two lovely children when she came to Milwaukee nine months ago to wait in a small sterile room for three "thawed" embryos, about 100 cells each, to be placed in her body.

Two weeks later, she called me, wild with joy and pride. With probably less than a 15 percent chance of success, we were expecting. I was so aghast that she thought I wasn't even happy. But I was overjoyed.

A quiet peace stole over me as the weeks passed. That came from Arty. She never put a foot wrong. She never wavered from her path. When I panicked, she reassured me. When we could see no "fetal pole" at five weeks, she asked me to wait on the arm of the Lord.

Two weeks later, she and I watched the flutter of a pulse that would become a heartbeat that would become our little boy.

Every day, I wrote her an e-mail that began, "Good morning, morning," and every day, she wrote back, telling me every change in Boo's development, every change in her body, how she explained to her little girl that she was "growing" this baby for a very special family of friends, how excited her little girl was, how supportive and kind her husband was being and how grateful she was for this.

Then, one morning, I got no answer.

I called Arty at home. She was clearly crying, but said that her "allergies" were bothering her. She was trying so hard not to believe what had befallen her. Her husband, Jack, had decided that she was an adulterer, that she had done something that violated HIS conscience -- although it had not when he spoke with a counselor, or when he signed a contract or when cheered her through painful injections so that she could so what she'd promised. He sued for divorce.

A judge believed Arty's husband when he said she was unstable, a con artist, a person not to be trusted. A judge said it was his own opinion that surrogacy wasn't such a terrific thing and might psychologically damage Arty's children. And so he gave temporary sole custody to her husband, who basically gave that custody to his parents. Because of what they said in open court, it's clear that they openly despise their daughter-in-law. They greet the shattering of this family with glee it seems hard to conceal.

For the past two weeks, Arty has lived in my house, as she waited for the baby to come, and recovered from his birth. I could not have exhibited such grace as she did, alone except for her aunt, in a strange place, with people she didn't know. She never met a stranger. People were won over to her gentle courage before they ever knew her story. And on the morning of our baby's birth, she was overjoyed for us, despite the fact that she could not reach her own children by telephone, on that day and another day, and didn't know for sure where they were.

She didn't waver when her husband, though he had no biological tie to our baby and no interest in our baby, refused to sign the pre-birth order that would have allowed our names to be placed on our own baby's birth certificate. The judge agreed that her husband didn't have to do that, either.

She didn't break down even when she wept, after Atticus's birth, because she no longer had him to cradle inside her, and because her arms might well be empty when she returned home. She didn't think her husband would make an exception to the twice-monthly visiting schedule. She assured us she was only being silly, and she would be fine..

She was only being one of the braver women I've ever known.

Yes, other people have faced much worse things. The loss of a child. A terrible illness. But losing the life you thought was your own, for no reason except choosing to perform an act of kindness, is right up there with things that crush the spirit.

Arty's spirit is not crushed.

She is one of a kind.

Atticus and I, and my husband and my other children will say goodbye to her today. I don't relish this. I wish I could protect her from what she must face -- months of legal wrangling just for the hope of what should have been a given: sharing custody of her own children with their father. She has never, not even in private, said a truly unkind word against him, at least to me. He has said many, many unkind words about her, even on videotape.

People have said there's another "side" to this story, a darker side I don't know, that Arty deserved what she got, that she was proud and willful. But I don't think quiet pride and determination are bad characteristics in a woman. She was never defiant or disrespectful, not even when most other people would have been. People have said the other shoe will drop now that our baby is born.

I hope it does drop. I hope it drops hard.

But not on this good and kind spirit, one of the gentlest people I've ever known.

If Arty's husband's family has their wishes come true, there will be no revision of the judge's opinion -- which was supposedly based on the fact that Arty couldn't be an effective mother while she was pregnant or giving birth. If that happens, I will have a hard time believing in the axiom that justice is blind except to the facts.

I have a hard time believing it now.

But one thing I know is true.

The proof of Arty's goodness lies here in my lap, six pounds and thirteen ounces of unblemished innocence, regarding me with unblinking eyes. I named him for an honorable man; and I hope that honorable men and women will decide the fate of Arty's future with her children.

Because if what she did for us is wrong, then nothing is right.

Jackie Mitchard

Since preschool days, my daughter's Francie's two best friends were Seb and Christian. They called themselves The Three Amigos. When Seb had a birthday party, he invited all his boy buddies -- and Francie. And when Christian had a birthday party, he invited all his boy buddies -- and Francie.

Francie's a beautiful girl, with luxuriant long, black hair and a beautiful smile. But she's also a tomboy, more interested in bowling than braiding her hair, more interested in collecting rocks than in collecting Hello Kitty toys. I've often though of her as being like Scout in 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' a girl running as hard as she could to keep up with the boys. Having three older brothers didn't hurt.

Or help.

Francie's almost ten now, and thought she and Seb and Christian still were friends when we moved away for a brief period this summer and fall, she'd just forged a strong new friendship with a lovely, unusual, funny kid named Zenape. Zen's beautiful and dear, and shares Francie's adventurous spirit. She also introduced Francie to sparkly t-shirts and skirts with irregular hems. If you ask Francie about Zen, she'll say, "Zen's a saint." She means that Zen bridged the gap for her, helping her have fun while avoiding things she still doesn't understand and may never embrace.

At nearly ten, Francie's not yet quite a pre-teen. She's barely a 'tween. She still leaves her tooth under the pillow and watches 'Sponge Bob' instead of MTV. Her CD's are still Disney instead of Britney. And when she entered a new shool, she thought she'd had lots of pals, both boys and girls, to run and play with. She found something very different, and it broke her heart.

Francie didn't understand that, at almost ten, boys and girls polarize. Boys think girls are either "hot" (yes, I've heard 10-year-old boys say that) or YUKKY! Girls thinks boys are giggle fodder, have "crushes," gather in the playground to decide if all of them (except the ones they leave out) will wear the same color shirts the next day.

Naturally, they didn't take to Francie. Francie didn't get it.

And then she did get it, smack in the chops. Her lunch money was stolen. Her desk was defaced. Kids sent her notes encouraging her to go back where she came from.

When she read her book report, one girl gave a signal; and all the girls in "circle time" turned their backs on her. Believing that kids need to work things out themselves, her teacher didn't intervene. And while I share that philosphy, and Francie does need to learn that boys and girls start to become different from each other at ten, and even more different at eleven and twelve, I hate that it had to happen that way, in public, over something about which she was pround. It left her confused and sad. She'd been a little girl who believed what her mom told her, that girls and boys are mostly the same except for some few details, and that they could be friends. She expected that, because I told her it was the way it was.

I believed that the world would be different for my daughters than it was for me. I believed that roles wouldn't be so set in stone, and that raising Francie to think that Girls Rule, as well as boys, would make it true.

But it isn't true.

Francie cried the first night. The second night, she wrote a journal entry about how it wasn't fair to tell stories and sing songs about how everybody's way was a very fine way, but then not let that be true in real life. She wanted to read it aloud. A wiser friend, a girl who doesn't dislike Francie (though she dared not show it in front of the popular girls) advised against the reading. It would just make people be meaner, she said. And so, Francie stayed silent, another thing girls weren't supposed to have to accept in the here and now, only in the then and there, where I grew up.

Maybe only the songs and stories have changed, but not the hearts and minds.

I don't blame parents for wanting their girls to be happy and fit in, to be invited to the birthday parties and sleepovers. I want that for Francie, too. Seeing her pain, and hating myself, I even encouraged Francie to curl her hair once in a while, and wear a barrette. But Francie objected. She said school wasn't the same as going to a party or to the theater, and dressing up wasn't necessary, and her customary casual ponytail was quite good enough. And it was she, not I, who was correct.

Abruptly, before middle school even began, she found out that girls such as she is, and I was -- girls who want to clean an unfortunate squirrel's skeleton with bleach and study it, instead of pretending to faint at the sight, who like their shirts baggy and their jeans with lots of pockets and a minimum of glitter -- are going to be by-gosh outcasts.

Until maybe they're senators.

Jackie Mitchard

There's a comment that recently appeared on this site expressing shock about our choice to bring another child into this world when we already had six.

It came with a self-righteous tongue-lashing about our "public humiliation" and a nasty crack about how I would "get another book" out of the legal difficulties surrounding the birth of our son.

This kind of talk proves again something to me that I already knew.

The propensity for people to point fingers never fails and beggars the imagination. The greater the individual's lack of understanding of a situation seems to be in direct inverse proportion to the venom of the accusations.

The writer points out how selfish it is to give birth to a child when there are many children who need homes.

Four of my seven children were adopted at birth.

I have not the slightest qualm about having a child through surrogacy as I have not contibuted, in any way, to over-populating the earth. The choice to have our son could be seen as "selfish," but we have never have asked anyone else to support our children, never once complained about them, never wished they'd grow up and get on with their lives.

Rather the opposite. Like the father in "Cheapter By the Dozen," we have sometimes reflected on how peaceful it will be when all the children are grown.

And we've hated the idea.

We hope to raise a family of many, each of whom is an only child. And we hope that those children will be the kind of adults who'll combat the impulse of so many people to judge harshly anything they don't understand.

We had a baby through surrogacy because it was less expensive and -- at first -- seemed less complicated than adoption. Arletta was an acquaintance who offered to do this for us as an act of grace, for little more than her expenses. As for how many children we have, that is no one's business but our own -- just as it is not our business to judge other's religion beliefs, appearance, business practgices or romantic lives, unless those beliefs or practices hurt us or others. My children don't hurt you; it seems unlikely that they will. That they have been thrust into some kind of public scrutiny through a choice of ours is a terrible sorrow to us, and we have repeatedly asked others to respect our privacy. To refuse to comment on our shock over a judge's decision would have been unsupportive of a very kind and very lovely woman who gave us a great gift.

As for the indivdual who commented that "Arletta's blood" runs in our son's veins, that's another index of ignorance. Our son was conceived from a frozen embryo that WE created. He is related neither to Arletta nor to her estranged husband -- which makes her husband's decision to complicate our lives by toying with our son's legal future seem all the more capricious.

In any case, unless you're a Gotti or Bobby Brown, I think it's only the very few who would like to violate their children's privacy.

We're not among that few.

Jackie Mitchard

As recently as last night, a woman wrote who'd been in the audience at a lecture and reading I gave and told me she'd heard "negative comments" about the fact that I have seven children.

Why, pray, is this a sin?

Our children don't drain away opportunities or resources from anyone else. They don't eat meat more than twice a week. They don't do harm in the world. They may drink more than the usual share of milk, but we pay for it. Why does the size of our family offend people's sensibilities, especially given that four of our seven children were adopted and therefore helped the society out, if you will, rather than harmed it?

A second comment, posted last night, childed me again for "not getting the proper signatures" and "not knowing the law" relative the legal problems surrounding the birth through surrogacy of our newborn son! The same individual also accused me of portraying people from Kentucky as ignorant hicks!

I've never done so.

Our surrogate is a highly educated, well-spoken, thoughtful and creative woman. The laws in Kentucky say nothing about the righteousness of taking away custody of a woman's children in a custody action because she chose to be a surrogate mother for a couple in another state! In itself, it's my surmise that being a surrogate is not proof of lack of fitness to be a parent to one's own children.

The frozen embryo that resulted in our son was conceived and implanted in WISCONSIN, and the baby is not a biological relation either to surrogate Arletta Benschneider or her estranged husband, Jack.

Moreover, ALL THE PAPERWORK was correctly, carefully, and legally executed by both married couples involved. The Benschneiders' marital problems are not of our doing. If we care about those problems, it is only out of the natural compassion of one human being for another. Our family's size and how it got that way is no one's business but our own; and we sought no attention from any media about our son's birth. In fact, we tried our best to dodge it.

If someone is clinging to ignorance, it certainly is not I.

Jackie Mitchard

Though I don't believe human events travel in cycles or that good or evil events happen in pairs or trios, two odd events happened recently, two days in a row.

The first was last night. I was giving a lecture and reading in a town southwest of the town where I've lived for nearly 30 years, when a man who looked familiar (I didn't realize why) approached the table where I was signing books after the event.

He laid a copy of my first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, in front of me, and opened the cover. There was a stamped name and address.

"I'm sorry," I said, "But why do you have a copy of my uncle's book?" My Uncle Frank, who died some years ago, was my father's last surviving brother.

"I found it on his desk after he died," the man said, "I thought you'd recognize me. They say I look like your dad.'

And he does look like my dad -- he looks just like my dad. But I hadn't seen my cousin Guy since we were teenagers; and the emotion and surprise I felt nearly made me weep. We hugged like..well, like long-lost relatives. He introduced me to his wife; and we promised to correspond. When he left, I felt that a hand from the past had reached out lightly and reassuringly on the back of the neck.

Just this morning, I got an email from a man called Bruce Minty. A Canadian (my father's family hails from Newfoundland), he told me he was my second cousin, that my grandfather, Herb, and his grandmother, Hepzibah, were brother and sister.

When I was only fifteen, my grandparents, Herb and Bess, took me to the tiny fishing village of Twillingate, Newfoundland, from whence my family sprang. It was like a voyage back in time. Great tuna washed up under the house; which stood on stilts to withstand the storms. Fishing boats went out from the harbor to the legendary Grand Banks; and the town's buildings straggled down the side of a hill to the water like a handful of weathered replicas in an antique Christmas village. Milk was delivered in glass bottles. The town ambulance was a panel truck. People went for big shoppng trips in the family motor boat. Tea was served each day at five and supper at seven.

It was a wild, beautiful, lonely place -- and I would give much to be there again, now. Foolish girl I was then, I was so lonely for my parents, among these odd and old-fashioned folk, that I went back home days before I should have. But I didn't go home before meeting my Aunt 'Eppie, who was old then, and as much like a character from Anne of Green Gables as any living human I have ever met. She lived with her sister in a house of ornate frame around ancient pictures, and horsehair sofas with crocheted doilies on the armrests. At that point, she and my grandfather had not seen each other perhaps in 25 years; and I don't believe they even exchanged a hug, although Aunt Hepzibah was kind and welcoming in her reserved way.

My grandfather was not a warm nor amiable man. in fact, he could be a downright crank, the only person I've ever known -- besides Ebenezer Scrooge -- to use the word "Humbug!" in conversation. He shared other characteristics with Mister Scrooge as well.

But he had a puzzling fondness for me, though I was not the only grandchild, nor even the only granddaughter. He once said I had I had more than the ordinary amount of gumption for a girl, and that he liked that in people (He certainly had more than the ordinary amount himself, having lived until age 94). And while I suppose I "loved" my other grandfather, my mother's father and one of the world's gentlest people, more than I loved Grandpa Herb, I had an awkward fondness for him, which I never quite managed to express. He never quite allowed it.

In any case, this cousin whom I never knew existed offered me a photo of my grandfather as a young man, in his pilot's uniform. He said "Uncle Herb" was a very handsome man, and I've no doubt of it. He was a very handsome man, with a back straight as one of his own black walnut trees, when I knew him. Mr. Minty also offered me a copy of a Methodist hymnal inscribed 'Herbert Mitchard, Twillingate, 1909.'

And for the second time in as many days, at a time when I think I needed that sense of being part of something that preceded me and would outlast me more than I ever have, I felt that same slight touch at my back.

It seemed to say, as my grandfather would have said (he would not have said more), "Steady on, girl. Trust yourself and who you are."

So i thank you, my cousins. There are very few Mitchards in the world; we're a small family and every one an eccentric. But I'm comforted to be one among them.

Jackie Mitchard