My disappointment was absolutely ridiculous.

First of all, my wife Jeanette was overburdened. Although I do help with our baby, she has the major responsibility for child care. She also takes a course in French Literature. It's a level higher than the courses she'd taken previously, not beyond her reach but a stretch. The first paper of the quarter was due that day; and she knew that she would soon, perhaps that day, have to present it to the class.

I teach at the University, which is why she can take one free course. I left my office and met her at the front door. She handed me the diaper bag and the car seat (with The Kitten, our four-month-old baby, still strapped in it). She said "Love you, Bob; she'll probably get hungry," before rushing off to her class.

"Love you," I called after her. And I did.

But I wished that she had said "Happy birthday" as well.

My progress up the two flights of stairs to my closet was interrupted three times by coeds and once by a secretary who wanted to coo at The Kitten. "Isn't she the cutest baby in the whole world?" I asked one coed.

"She is a darling," was the response.

I suppose that my office isn't really a closet; it has half a window. There is room for my desk, my cellmate's desk, chairs for the two of us, and standing room for up to three students. Luckily, The Kitten only takes up room on the desk.

I couldn't stay depressed long in her presence. Indeed she, Catherine Angelique Brennan to be formal, is the primary reason that I should have been happy as a lark. We had wanted a baby for a long time. The Kitten was here, was healthy -- an unexpressed dark-hours worry for expectant parents -- and was the cutest baby in the whole world.

And Jeanette's class time was my quality time. I held my daughter against my shoulder while I read my copy of When We Were Very Young to her. For swaying in time with the poetry's beat an office chair is a good substitute for a rocker.

And the rocking reminded me of the second reason that I should be happy. For a long period, our sex life had been restricted. First there were the mechanical details involved in enhancing the chances of conception. "Making a baby" is lots of fun, but seriously trying to do so restricts your choice of positions. Then, as her pregnancy advanced, we had to abandon having her on top, then having me on top, and then any penetration at all. The period immediately after The Kitten's birth had constrained our sexual activities as well. Over the last three months, however, the constraints have disappeared.

Interruptions had been plentiful. I think The Kitten has a sixth sense; but Jeanette disagrees. She points out that we hardly have a dinner which isn't interrupted either. "You just care more about our time in bed," she says. Anyway, interruptions can be dealt with. And they provide a great excuse.

Before the baby, Jeanette had sometimes been reluctant to engage in sex play before the "proper time" for bed. Nowadays, however, Jeanette agrees that any evening nap by The Kitten provides an opportunity that might not recur that night. For that matter, the last feeding before bedtime has become almost a ritual period for foreplay. Jeanette lies down on the bed, The Kitten lies at her breast, and I get any skin left over.

This rarely extends beyond foreplay, although we might protract the foreplay luxuriously. My oral ministrations, originally reserved for special occasions and then makeshifts when genital intercourse was no longer possible, now regularly garnish our bedtimes.

And, when The Kitten is away (in sleep), the mice get to play.

The previous night, for example, I'd teased Jeanette to the edge and kissed and licked her over that edge. We'd all lain there in the afterglow until The Kitten was totally done. I'd changed her before taking her to the rocker to burp her. Our bedroom wasn't really designed for three, but everything almost fits; her changing table was once my dresser, and I managed to put her in her little bed without leaving the rocker.

"Aren't you coming back?" Jeanette had asked.

"I thought that you might join me." She'd laughed but came to sit on my knees facing me.

"Going to rock all your girls to sleep?"

I'd pulled her closer and had patted her back. "Christopher Robin goes hoppity, hoppity," I'd begun. She stopped me with a kiss. Somewhere in the midst of our kissing, the joke had disappeared. The nice thing about that position is that any spreading of my legs spreads hers more. I'd used that access to tease her until she'd been ready. She'd broken the last kiss and leaned back while she grasped me. That had given me the chance for a couple of kisses on her breasts before she'd fitted us. Then we'd rocked together. I'd slid within her until she'd been on the edge once more. A few touches on her magic button had taken her over. Her gasping moans and rhythmic clutching around me, had begun my own...

My musings were interrupted by a student. "Is Professor Johnson here?" she asked. And then, when I pointed out that his posted hours hadn't begun yet, "Hi, Kitten, want to come to Jackie?" The Kitten clearly did and enjoyed a few minutes of appreciation from somebody new. When she looked anxious, Jackie handed her back. Johnson came in just then, still a little early. "Professor Johnson," the girl asked, "that paper you assigned this morning, is it due the fifth?"

"November fifth, that's right." He looked at me when the girl left, and we both laughed.

"You have an admirer, Catherine Angelique," I said. He grimaced good-naturedly. He'd complained some about my doing child-care in that office, but he'd stopped after a visit from the dean of women to tell me how strongly she supported the idea of men participating in parenting. She came, rather than phoned, while Johnson was in the office. Message sent, message received.

The Kitten made the mouth motions which signaled that she was hungry. I took sixty seconds to come up with the bottle, and she took thirty seconds to shriek her starvation. The only way I can find to bottle-feed her is lying on my arm facing away from me, with the tiny bottle held horizontal in my other hand. When I'd tried it with her on her back and the bottle above her, she'd applied the suction that she normally applies to her mother's breast. The resulting volume of milk had almost drowned her.

I walked her out in the hall for that feeding. She would suck a little and then look up at me. "That's right," I said. "Mommy's not here right now. Daddy's looking after you. And Mommy left her milk so you could eat. She loves you. And I love you. And we'll keep you safe and warm."

The Kitten's physical needs are satisfied by bottle feedings, but she never treats them to that blissed-out look that she gets when she is nursing. Who can blame her? She seems to enjoy Daddy's burping strategy, however. "Just for a handful of silver he left us..." I recited, pacing the hall with a swagger and patting her firmly in time with the verse. A satisfactory eruction accomplished, we went back to the office.

Changing diapers does not count as quality time from my perspective, although The Kitten expresses her pleasure at losing those encumbrances by waving her arms, kicking her legs, and occasionally voiding her bladder. This time, however, was without incident. My desk was safe and my office mate minimally offended.

I leaned back with her on my shoulder and rocked silently. Having had an exciting morning, she was soon asleep. I put my pocket watch on the desk and let my mind stray.

There is something both comforting and sensual about having a small life breathing against your chest. I know that Jeanette feels the same way, and I've taken advantage of her feeling once or twice. Mostly, we restrict ourselves to foreplay while The Kitten is nursing, but not always.

One night, we'd been convinced that The Kitten would sleep for hours more. We'd luxuriated in the time and privacy. I had kissed Jeanette everywhere else before she had parted her legs and given me access to her center. With her lying on her left side and my lying on my right side behind her, we can look each other in the eye while I kiss her, at least when no baby is between us. I had savored her odor and taste while teasing her with my tongue. Then she'd stiffened, and her eyes had focused elsewhere. After I had sucked and licked her to a rather noisy climax, we'd lain in quiet repletion and -- in my case -- eager anticipation.

At which point, The Kitten had surprised us by crying. I popped the pacifier into her mouth while I changed her, but she clearly wanted the real thing. Barely recovered, Jeanette had lain back with the baby on her belly while I had kissed her gently. Soon her knees raised and spread to give me access. "She won't go back to sleep after this one," she warned.

"I'll put her in the car seat on the bed and shake the bed to keep her entertained."

"Est-ce-que ton papa est bete?" she asked our child. "Non? Est-il tres bete?" Catherine's responses to these conversations being silent, Jeanette reports them to me. "She says that you are very silly."

Meanwhile, I'd been lying far down the bed with Jeanette's thighs and quim within easy reach. I had given her an occasional kiss on the ribs, but only my hand had done anything serious. I'd been careful to keep my motions gentle, but the physical pleasure of brushing that fine hair and smoothing those thin lips had slowly been overtaken by the emotional pleasure of seeing Jeanette's renewed arousal. My arousal hadn't been in question, by then it had become painful. "Are you okay?" I'd asked her perfunctorily, being certain that she'd taken care of the contraception.

"Bob?"

"Let me try this way." She'd looked a little dubious, but had allowed me to raise her legs and slip under them. Lying at right angles to her, I'd parted her lips again. That time, however, I'd had more than a finger to slip inside. That position is a little clumsy, there being no muscle pattern to move one in and out. All that had meant, however, was that my entry had been excruciatingly slow as her warmth enclosed me millimeter by millimeter.

Once enclosed in that moist clasp, I'd only been able to rock side to side to generate internal friction, but that hadn't been my main goal. My fingers, still on her labia, had resumed their caresses. She'd turned from The Kitten to look at me as I'd gone further. A few strokes around her clitoral area had been answered by her stiffening and muffled gasps. She had reached her right hand to find my left. Then she'd given me the gift of ultimate intimacy. Silently, she had spasmed around me.

It had been a minute before her eyes met mine again. "I love you," had been my greeting. Asked then and there whether any other gift could have matched that, I would have laughed at the idea. So why was I feeling so forlorn today?

"Love you, too," she'd responded.

"Didn't feel lonely?" That had been her complaint when we'd tried that position long before. It does separate all of of our bodies but the critical parts.

"Felt loved," she'd answered. "All my family loving me." She'd extricated her hand from mine to hold The Kitten to her breast. Then her left hand had pushed its way between my thighs.

I'd parted them immediately but warned her, "I can't hold back if you do that. There won't be anything for later."

"Don't want later. Want now. Want my husband." Excited by both her words and her hand, I'd resumed my rocking from side to side. Rocking like that I had slipped a mere inch into and out of her slick warmth. Her eyes locked to mine had communicated her love as clearly as her feather-light caresses to my scrotum had communicated desire. When she had tightened herself around me in time to my strokes, I'd lost it. She'd greeted each pulse of my seed with a quiet "yes."

Anyway, it was time to pack The Kitten back up. I did so, looked for Jeanette, and headed for my classroom. This was the bottleneck of our schedule. If she were running a little late, she'd head for the classroom where I was to teach next. She was not there, however, and I brought The Kitten inside. We had two minutes until the scheduled beginning of class, but the fuss at my entrance made clear that no one would settle down before Jeanette arrived. "Oh Professor Brennan, can I hold her?" were the first words that I heard.

"She stays in the car seat" I ruled. "Her mother is expected momentarily, and this is a class in history. It's time to turn in your papers." But then I relented. "You can look if not touch. Isn't she the cutest baby in the whole world?"

"Does that question count on the final grade?" asked one coed. There is one smartass in every class.

"Thirty percent," I responded. "What's your answer, Deborah."

Deborah, who was a joy to have in the class when -- and only when -- we were discussing history, answered, "Sorry Professor Brennan. I have a nephew who is really the cutest baby in the whole world."

"Well, I'll excuse you in that case. But if you plan to become a professional historian, you'll have to put aside these personal biases and respond only to the objective facts." For some unfathomable reason the entire class broke out into roars of laughter at this.

"Hello Kitten," came an unmistakable voice from the doorway. "Are you keeping Daddy's class entertained?" The Kitten brightened noticeably at Jeanette's appearance. Jeanette grabbed the car seat and the diaper bag; she knew that time was critical. "Parlerons," she said to me. "Nous t'aimons."

"Je vous aime." I responded, before turning to the class. "Europe," I said to them, "is a matter of physical geography in one sense. In another sense, it is an idea. Three of the great seedbeds of civilization were in contact with each other, Nile, Mesopotamia, and the Indus. The lesser, but still early, civilization of Crete was in touch with Egypt. With the spread of Aryans, or speakers of Indo-European languages, contact with Indian civilization was interrupted. Meanwhile other groups, most notably the Phoenicians came to the fore. Joined by various Aryan groups which had now adopted civilization, these formed a multicultural exchange of ideas and trade. We might say that the Eastern Mediterranean civilization had begun.

"This civilization came to be politically dominated by successive semi-barbarian Aryan groups from its edge. First the Persians, then the Macedonians, and finally the Romans." If they absorbed one percent of that summary, they were faster on the uptake than I have any right to expect. Mostly, I was dropping the hint that the history we studied had a history of its own. I took a breath and slowed way down.

"In one of the most troublesome provinces of the Roman Empire, a strange sect arose, and spread, and is spreading still. Christianity was not European by birth, but it will define Europe for the rest of our study. And it is the subject of this week's selections." They were back in the classroom and starting to pay attention. They moved into the arguments historians make around the birth and spread of Christianity.

"Schweitzer's approach is theological, not historical," said one student. He was summarizing what the editor had said and making me suspect that he had read the introduction and not the passage.

"Right," I replied. "He was a theologian dealing with a theological question, and his summary -- which is what we have here -- was theological. But he raised one methodological point which every historian should be aware of. What Schweitzer did in his book was to look at a long sequence of studies of "The Historical Jesus," and look at each author's positions on theological and moral issues aside from that book. Guess what?

"Each author's description of Jesus' positions was a good description of his own position.

"Now this is an extreme example, but it is a common danger. When you 'go behind' your source texts, you are in danger of replacing uncertain or conflicting reports with definite-but- imagined events."

This started them off. I like teaching, and I especially like teaching majors. A "problems" course like this one is about doing history more than it is about the particular issues. Read one source and you have a clear idea what happened; read five sources and you have some glimpse of the real questions about what happened. You also see the questions which the secondary sources had to struggle with.

Maybe two-thirds of these students were interested in such questions. One or two others engaged themselves deeply in the particular issues. Half of the interested group actually considered these questions between discussion sessions instead of reading (maybe) the book and winging it when the talk started. A minute before the class was scheduled to end, I started handing back the papers from the week before. However interested in the discussion, they were more interested in grades. Some of them, however, wanted to hammer down points that I had moved the class past. I walked out into the hall before responding, "Anybody who doesn't have class can follow me to the cafeteria."

Four took me up on it. Two were still arguing with each other when I left for my lecture class on "Intro. to Western Civilization." Those students straggle in over the first eight minutes of class and would bolt if I ran one minute over the scheduled end of class.

Then I spent several hours in the library. Jeanette and I are working on a book which involves a small slice of the diplomatic records of France. The diplomatic history of one country, however, necessarily involves other countries. I have a long list of names, some of them of dubious spelling, which were mentioned one time or more in the correspondence. So I look in disintegrating copies of Who's Who and then the index of book after book for some reference to the person who might fit that name.

When I left those bright lights for the outside dusk, my mood paradoxically brightened. I'd found two possibles, and I was convinced that a birthday celebration awaited me at home. My pace quickened.

Jeanette was nursing The Kitten in the rocker when I got home. I took a minute to hang up my coat before lounging in the doorway to watch. "Voulons nous laisser ton papa nous regarder?" Jeanette asked her.

"I get to watch," I argued. "I haven't had my welcome-home kiss yet."

"She says that you can listen to Maman's report on her day in class, but any watching has to be surreptitious." Which is pretty fancy vocabulary for a four-month-old.

"So! How was your day?"

"Well it started out nervous," she said. She was talking to the baby again, speech in the pauses of nursing. "I mentioned to Papa last night. I wasn't sure that Professor Schwartz. Wanted the paper written en Francais. We read the books in French. But we talk in English in class. But I wrote my paper in French. And didn't think to wonder until last night. So, when he asked who was ready. I said that I wasn't sure. Half the class laughed. I asked whether he wanted it in French or English. All the class laughed. I could have dropped through the floor. 'Are you ready in either language?' he asked. I said 'yes.' He finished collecting the papers.

"Then he asked me to go first. I got up, stumbled a little in my talk. Then I took a deep breath. Like Papa says to do. I read the entire paper in dead silence. 'Are there any questions?' the professor asked. There were none. 'Are there any comments? No?' He called for another paper. The boy read it in English. The other students asked some questions. Then two girls went through the same process. The questions were rather savage on one. After the last paper of the day he mentioned me again. 'Mme. Brennan doesn't know the procedures. You think that is very funny. But she can do three things. She can write French and speak French. And she can present a paper after the class has laughed at her. In January, she will know the procedures. Which of you will learn one of her three accomplishments by then?' Ta Maman wasn't the only one blushing.