The Feast of the Assumption was last month, and I found this related article interesting. I had never even heard of "microchimerism" before, much less seen it in a post about Mary's Assumption. I thought it'd make an interesting FGO. This post is about how quickly I was able to put something together.
I first went to Wiki & Google and browsed a bit, cutting & pasting from a wide assortment of articles, enough to familiarize myself with some main points, such as:
"Microchimerism is the presence of a small number of cells that are genetically distinct from those of the host individual. Most people are born with a few cells genetically identical to their mothers' and the proportion of these cells goes down in healthy individuals as they get older.....Women often also have a few cells genetically identical to that of their children, and some people also have some cells genetically identical to that of their siblings (maternal siblings only, since these cells are passed to them because their mother retained them)."
and
"Studies have shown that women may harbor cells from their mothers, albeit small amounts, for decades. Couple that with cells from their children, and a remote possibility can be imagined where a fetus may receive cells from their mothers, grandmothers, and older siblings. A person may be walking around with 4 or more distinct genetic lineages within them."
Then I wrote down a half-dozen or so ideas that would take me from Mommas and Babies to Microchimerism and the Assumption. Not having anything I could read out loud kept my delivery fresh and conversational, and I was done in less than 5 minutes. Part of the fun was talking about pregnancy and microchimerism without giving any clue as to what it might have to do with Catholicism.
