Surrounded by Women

All moms and dads have a saturation point in terms of numbers of children, beyond which they can go crackers.  You occasionally run into the parents of nine or ten offspring who seem to have all patience.  Then you meet the parents of a single child who could quote Clint Eastwood’s avatar Dirty Harry Callahan, who eloquently summed up parenthood: “A man‘s gotta know his limitations.”

My wife and I decided that for financial, emotional, and other reasons our limit was two.  We came to that conclusion before our third daughter was one week old, and we experienced all over again the thrill of not sleeping through the night.  The big difference being, we were turning forty. 

Of course, we did not think about sending her back — not seriously, and definitely not recently!

We would not be trying for a son, but that was not a big disappointment, honestly wanting a girl every time.  After all, I had been the youngest of three boys, always yearning for a sister.  The thought of little girls running around the house was delightful. 

It was thrilling when Wendy was born.  I behaved as if I had invented childbirth, crowing and cooing, bragging until my friends and neighbors crossed the street when they saw me coming, and embarrassing my wife by taking rolls of film of her nursing our firstborn for the first time.

Before Wendy was one month old, my excitement drove me to the keyboard and a detailed chronicle: remembering the Lamaze lessons, babying out the nursery, our midnight trip to Kaiser, labor and delivery, and how we felt about all this.  It ran to forty pages, and copies were sent to the immediate and extended family and many others, whether they asked or not.  The picture taking continued unabated.  The annual Christmas photo album that year was huge.

I loved every step.  Every first step, every single step, every kind of step.  Every crawling, walking, running, new-word, candle-on-the-cake, mark-on-the-door-jamb, up-on-dad’s shoulder, scraped-knee, kissing-the-owie, falling-asleep-on-dad’s-chest … all those steps.  You know what I mean.  The wonder of it all! We asked ourselves, “How can we match this?”

Then Annie was born. 

How different she was from her sister.  In utero, Wendy rolled around.  Annie did jumping jacks.  When Wendy was nursing and the milk would not come right away, she would fuss a little.  Annie would make a little fist and pound on the container, just the way you would slap a vending machine if it ate your dollar and didn’t give you a Pepsi.

Wendy strolled and skipped; Annie ran.  Wendy read; Annie fluttered the pages and made up stories of her own.  Wendy was a string quartet; Annie was a brass band.  We didn’t take as many pictures the second time around and her story was eighteen pages, but the wonder of it was the same.  We said to ourselves, “The perfect nuclear family, two kids and a dog.”

Then along came Emily.

She was as different from her sisters as they were from each other.  Annie’s early drawings were representational; Emily’s were “music in the air.”  Wendy wanted to postpone “lights out” with stories about Princess Wendymere and her adventures; Emily wanted all the songs from a different “musical” every night.  Her sisters tended to live in the here and now, but Emily woke up in new world every day.  Yet she brought the same wonder — that wonder when your child flops against you and throws her arms around your neck, and you pat her, and she pats your shoulders in return.

Emily’s story was a page and a half.  That caused me to worry if she needed an apology for the brevity of my account of her birth.  Now that she has three boisterous sons, five and under, she gets it.  She barely has time to sleep, let alone write.   

With each pregnancy, friends would ask if I was hoping for a son this time, and the conversation often centered on father-son bonding over sports.  I never pined for a son, but I did get my sports fix.  Oh, how I loved those summer evenings under the streetlamps when Wendy and I played catch; she later played left field on the school softball team.  Oh, how I treasured Annie’s great determination in track and field as she challenged herself with hurdles and the pole vault.  Emily detested sports.  But oh, how I geeked out on opera with a passion equal to her love of “Bring Him Home” and “Un Bel Di.”

They are grown now, but the wonder has not disappeared.  The wonder now is the special relationship with adult children.  The wonder now is the loving attention they give their mom and dad.  The wonder now is the cherished sisterhood they share.  The wonder now is the passion they share for their art, the passion they share for social justice, the passion for the good and altruistic work they do.  They astound me.

I will write of these amazing women in future blogs, probably providing some embarrassment to them from the quill of a proud papa.  I am grateful to be surrounded by these incredible, interesting women — my wife and my three daughters.