Dear Henry

"You might hit a home run or whatever, but getting home and having your kid tell you, 'Daddy, I love you,' that's priceless."

Those words might seem at odds with Ramirez's image as a goofy character without a care in the world, an impression bolstered by his baggy uniform, flapping dreadlocks and lapses as a fielder and baserunner. But current and past teammates, as well as others close to him, insist that snapshot doesn't fully capture Ramirez.

"I just don't understand. He's ten-years-old. If I could trade places with him, I would. I've been here long enough. Just to make him better," said Charles Jenkins, father.

Tyler was diagnosed in March with Fanconi Anemia, a genetic blood disorder that leads to bone marrow failure. "I'm real sad about it. I don't want to go through it but I know I gotta go through it to get helped," said Tyler. "I just cried and cried for days because I'd already told this was much worse than leukemia," said Tyler's mother Kelly.

Tyler was born with deformed thumbs, a symptom of the rare disease, and he recently developed skin discolorations. He is constantly tired. His blood doesn't clot properly and a simple cut could kill him. His parents had to pull him out of school to keep him safe. "School is my worst enemy," Tyler said.

Tyler's little sister Kaelyn may have the disease too. Test results are pending. Kaelyn is likely Tyler's best shot at a bone marrow match. In the meantime, the family is praying and living each day the best they can. "We just try and cherish every day we have with him because it might be our last," said Mr. Jenkins.

The family will move to Cincinnati soon where they'll spend six months at the Children's Hospital. It's one of two hospitals in the country that treats people with this disease. Tyler will undergo chemotherapy and radiation there and will be kept in isolation.

TYLER ROSS JENKINS FUND
BANK OF CHARLES TOWN
111 E. WASHINGTON STREET
CHARLES TOWN, WV 25414
304-725-8431WWW.MYBCT.COM

We went to Cleveland for the second half of your brothers' spring break. Mom took them to Rehoboth Beach for most of last week and then on Friday we went to Cleveland. On Friday night we went to see the Indians play the Yankees (for Joe, who loves the Yanks); on Saturday we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (for Jack, me and Mom, who love Rock and Roll); and on Saturday night we went to visit Mom's college roommate and great friend, Jane Esselstyn and her kids.

As always, I was thinking of you and remembering my past visits to Cleveland. I thought about the last two times I was there. One was on my way back from dropping the cells off with Dr. Hughes in Detroit. I had driven from New York City through a hurricane to get the biopsied cells to his lab for analysis. I then turned right back and headed towards Mom in New York, only stopping for about 4-5 hours sleep in a hotel off the highway near Cleveland. And the last time was on my way back from Minnesota after your transplant. You, Jack and Mom flew on the Honeywell corporate jet home, and I drove our green Isuzu Rodeo, with our stuff piled up inside, back to DC. My first stop was in Madison, Wisconsin and my last stop was in Cleveland, where I had dinner and stayed overnight with Karen and Chip and their brood.

Karen is still in China. Mom got an email from her yesterday. Mom remembered the trips we made to Cleveland for Karen's wedding and Jane's wedding. What we didn't talk about was the stop we made there on the way to Minneapolis. Strangely, when I got online today I got an email alert (I'll explain those later) that gave me this link...

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/01/magazine/01FANCONI-JOURNAL.html?ex=1209528000&en=2175d59d0515b521&ei=5070

Google must have just indexed the New York Times archives from 2001 or something. It was a weird coincidence. Mom's description of "what felt like the longest walk around any block ever," really brought me back. I always think that if I ever have to remind myself that I have the courage to do anything, I will think back to when I removed your respirator so you could die. Mom has done some incredibly brave things and that walk is one of the bravest.

This trip had no great drama, but it was great all the same.

We went to Jacobs Field, where Mom and I went to a game the weekend of Karen and Chip's wedding, and watched a decent slugfest that the Indians ended up winning 6 to 4. Joe was just a tiny bit disappointed. Oh, and the park is called Progressive Field now.

I always find it a bit painful going to a ballgame during Passover. No hotdogs or beer. I actually had a kosher hotdog without a bun. That stunk. After the game they had a terrific fireworks which we all enjoyed.

I told you a few years back how the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sued Jeffrey, David and me for trademark infringement. That was all pretty silly and definitely not "rock and roll." We changed the name of the organization and the website to Jewsrock.org. I had never been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame even though I love rock, had been sued by them and once donated something from XM to the place for display. So I guess it was time.

They had a lot of great exhibits and movies. I know that Jack really enjoyed himself. Joe, not so much. But he was a champ and hung in there. We were there for close to 5 hours and we could have used an additional day.

After the Rock Hall we headed to Jane's family's home in the hills of northeastern Ohio. The property is called The Knob. You were there once with Jack and us, and you had a blast. You played the homemade "Toss Across" game they have. You threw bean bags through holes in the wood board.

I showed it to Joe and of course he starts whipping the beanies like they were baseballs. I think he was showing off for Crile, Jane's oldest daughter. I told him that a good method was the underhand toss. Nothing doing.

I guess I've been to the Knob twice before. Once was with you and the other was for Jane and Brian's wedding. I remember that you and Joe hung out at Karen's mom's house during the wedding. The property has been in Jane's family forever. The road that we got on when we exited the highway was called "Crile Road." Crile is Jane's grandmother's family name.

In the bathroom on the first floor of the house there is a photo of Lou Gehrig. There is an inscription from Lou's wife Eleanor to Jane's grandfather. She says that of all of the people who cared for her husband, Lou loved Jane's grandfather the most. He was a doctor - but also an athlete - big and strong like Lou. It truly is an amazing personal tribute and piece of history. It is a cliche, but they don't make heroes like Lou Gehrig anymore. He was an amazing baseball player who just let his performance on the field do the talking. His "quiet" greatness would make a good role model for Joe.

Jane and her whole family (for generations) are just so interesting and impressive. When we were there, Jane showed us a book that her mom and dad just wrote. It says that to live a long and healthy life you shouldn't eat anything with a mom or a face. Yuck. That means no meat or dairy. People who eat like that are called "vegans." Since I can't eat dairy and Mom doesn't eat meat, it makes a lot of sense for us. We're going to try it. We'll see how long we can stick to it. Don't worry. Your brothers still get to eat whatever they want.

Jane is always a delight to be around. She is full of life. Her kids are great too, and it was nice to get to know them. Jack really enjoyed hiking through the woods and learning stuff from Jane. She used to be an Outward Bound instructor and knows so much about the outdoors. Unfortunately, Brian was busy and wasn't able to be there with us over the weekend.

We finally headed out on Sunday morning after some rock climbing and zip lining. On the trip back Mom and I spent some time listening to a book on my iPod called Love Is a Mix Tape by a guy named Rob Sheffield. It is about Rob's wife Renee, who died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism. When I first put it on I was worried Mom was going to say, "not another thing associated with your fixation on death and dying." But she didn't. She actually really liked it. The way Rob describes his love for Renee and their life together, and his sadness at her dying is wonderful. It made me think of you and it made me think of Mom.

Listening to a book really makes the trip easier. We did run into traffic right outside of Hagerstown, Maryland. The cars on the highway just stopped. We listened to the radio and learned that there was an accident on the other side of the road. We figured that it must have been pretty bad considering all of the emergency vehicles that were on the scene. Mom was just praying that the guys wouldn't have to see anything terrible. They cleared it all before we got to the scene.

While we were stopped, I noticed a car next to us that said, "In Memory of Ashley Maria Bellosi 1984-2007" on the back window. The windows were all tinted really dark. You couldn't see the people inside. I was wondering if Ashley's parents were inside.

I think the whole phenomenon of putting that kind of thing on your car, which is totally new, is interesting. I wouldn't do it (though your initials HSG make up the license plate on the Vespa), but it does allow people to honor their loved ones in a way they want - very public. I looked up Ashley Maria Bellosi when I got home and what I learned was so sad and tragic. Ashley was a beautiful young woman in Baltimore who last year was beaten to death by her boyfriend.

Long illnesses, sudden or violent... it all stinks.

Maybe this whole thing is my "In Memory of Henry Strongin Goldberg 1995 - 2002."

My husband and I are getting ready to do what many couples in these brink-of-recessionary times would consider unthinkable. No, we're not buying a Martha's Vineyard retreat or planning a month in St. Bart's or eco-decorating our house.

What shocks people, when we tell them, isn't the thought of hauling three kids onto a place for a vacation, or even the idea of coming home every night to a houseful of runny noses and homework assignments. What gets them is the sheer financial audacity. Raising kids today costs a fortune. Last month, the Department of Agriculture estimated that each American child costs an average of $204,060 to house, clothe, educate and entertain until the age of 18.

But to me, a family with just two kids seems minimalist, and even a bit sad. Back in the 1970s, when my husband and I were born, sprawling families were more common. My husband had two sisters and, following a Brady-Bunchy set of remarriages in my family, I wound up with seven brothers, real and step. I've always fantasized about creating a "Meet Me in St. Louis"-style household of my own, with children constantly underfoot and enough relatives around to skip to my lou en masse.

And yet nowadays, people seem aghast if a couple wants more than two children. When Elana Sigall, a 43-year-old attorney in Brooklyn, was pregnant with her third, people came up to her constantly, she said, to admonish her: "You've got a boy and a girl already. Why don't you just leave it alone?"

What's worse, the desire to have another child opens one up to charges of elitism and status consciousness. In many major U.S. cities and their suburbs -- especially New York, where I live -- having three or more children has now come to seem like an ostentatious display of good fortune, akin to owning a pied-Ã -terre in Paris. The family of five has become "deluxe." Last year, novelist Molly Jong-Fast mused in the New York Observer, "Are people having four or five children just because they can? Because they feel that it shows their wealth and status? In a world where the young rich use their $13,000 Birkin bags as diaper bags, one has to wonder."

We not only wonder, we marvel, we get jealous, we gawk. "Having three kids in the city is a way of showing off, absolutely," says Elisabeth Egan, who, like many families she knows, moved out of New York to the suburbs of Montclair, N.J., to manage the feat. "A third child in the city is definitely a luxury good."

It's true that, following in the designer maternity clothes of such fecund celebrities as Posh Spice (three kids) and Angelina Jolie (speculatively six), most of the people going for a third baby are well-heeled moms and their high-salaried husbands. A February analysis of Current Population Survey data by the Council on Contemporary Families found that in the past 10 years, the top-earning 1.3 percent of the population has seen an uptick in families with three or more children. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 12 percent of upper-income women had three children or more in 2002, compared with only 3 percent in 1995.

There's no question that it takes a lot more money to bring up baby nowadays. Many parents would scoff at the Agriculture Department's humble figures. When you get into the nitty-gritty, the price of kids feels more like a million dollars a pop.

Consider raising a single "luxury" child. By luxury, mind you, we're not necessarily talking hedge-fund rich, merely able to afford and "raise right." And the pressure to do that, even if you're not uber-wealthy, has become overwhelming. From the moment the heartbeat blinks across the sonogram screen, Big Baby starts in with its pleading and conniving: I'm your child! How can you spare any expense? Don't you care?

For a couple's every conceivable wish or worry, the parenting industry knows the precise formula of guilt, fear, hope, love and desire that will empty the parental wallet. Rather than fret about spending too much money, most parents these days are consumed by the anxiety of underspending -- the fear that somewhere, some other parent is offering her baby an educational toy or child-development class that will propel the toddler ahead, and that if you skimp, your child risks losing out and falling behind.

So parents quickly adjust to the demanding realities of the child-rearing industry. Baby showers have replaced bridal showers as the blowout du jour; American women today have an average of three. The accompanying baby registries have mushroomed into a $240 million business, according to research firm Mintel International Group. Between diapers and bouncy seats, parents can count on spending at least $6,500 on the first year of baby gear alone. "You walk into Babies R Us, and you're just overwhelmed," recalls Brooke Houghton, a 35-year-old mom from Chicago who said she ran out of the store in panic after 15 minutes. "There was just so much equipment I hadn't even considered."

Once a new mom's maternity leave (if she's lucky enough to get it) is up, a nanny or quality day care is in order. In upscale urban areas and tony suburban enclaves, where luxury families are flourishing, that can translate to $800 a week for child care alone. So-called high-end nannies -- those who hail from licensed agencies and come equipped with working papers and even driver's licenses -- can cost more than $50,000 a year on the books. And to think, some deluxe families hire two. After all, how can one nanny juggle a set of twin infants and a 3-year-old, or ferry three kids under 6 to their various play dates, preschool programs and lessons?

For parents who both work full-time -- or those otherwise occupied with family, charitable and social obligations -- child care doesn't end when the children enter school. If you calculate nanny pay on top of $26,000 annual private school tuition (eventually multiplied by three), you're talking $140,000 just to keep your children safe and reasonably occupied while the sun's up. Once children are a bit older, there's the battery of ballet, piano, squash (offbeat sports viewed as an inroad to Harvard), and the vehicles needed to get there. Hyper-vigilant child safety laws mean that up to the age of 7, children are boxed into full-size or booster car seats. Try jamming three of those into the back seat of a compact car.

Most families simply can't afford all this. And surely it can't all be necessary. Didn't Benjamin Franklin grow up to be a statesman, inventor, printer, author and political theorist without having his vision enhanced by a Stim-Mobile or his sense of spatial relations improved by Baby Einstein Numbers? Somehow young Ben managed to thrive and prosper even though the Teddy bear had yet to be invented.

Today's American children, by contrast, get an average of 70 new toys a year, yet child development experts agree that the best toys are simple playthings such as blocks, balls and figurines that a child can play with over and over, in new ways. When I was growing up, a sticker was something precious that a stationery store owner would carefully cut off a roll and sell for 25 cents. Today, a made-in-China jumbo book of 600 stickers can be bought at CVS for $6.99. Something has been lost in this ostensibly positive development.

Far from inducing feelings of inadequacy, saying no to the parenting consumer culture should make parents feel all the wiser. And conversely, no one should have to feel that they should refrain from having a child for fear of being accused of snobbery.

Since her own pokes at deluxe families last year, Molly Jong-Fast has become a mother of three herself, having recently given birth to twins. "I don't blame people for having more, if they can," she told me. "If we had unlimited resources, I think we'd have more children, too."

As for my husband and me, we hardly have unlimited resources, but we're still planning to go forth and multiply in the big city. The way we figure it, one day our children will be grateful for what we didn't give them -- and what we did for them instead.

Some may call this rationalization or flat-out denial. Perhaps we mere mortals of the upper middle class, preparing to haul out the bassinet and the Exersaucer for a third go-round, should question our sanity. But we're banking on proving the naysayers wrong.

Pamela Paul is the author of "Parenting Inc.: How We Are Sold on $800 Strollers, Fetal Education, Baby Sign Language, Sleeping Coaches, Toddler Couture, and Diaper Wipe Warmers -- and What It Means for Our Children."