The Epihany...

My kids went through life like a capybara through an anaconda.

At only 15 months apart, they grew up like twins...or quads.  My four daughters all came spewing out like so many pages from a Zerox machine.  Boom, boom boom!  One after another!  They they were!  To love and kiss and hug.  And to feed and clothe and educate and, and, and...

I can still (less than) fondly recall changing one while Elaine was feeding another.  All day.  And all night.  Every day, and every night.  Did I tell you Elaine was pregnant for five years?

Just trying to get laid, I was...

Yep, just wandering through life, selling stuff, making money and trying to get laid.  Just like every other single guy in America.  At that time.  No telling what single guys want now.  Not even sure that guys are guys here in California any more.  You know the old saying might actually have come true:  "California:  Where the men are men and half the women are too."  You can get arrested here for calling somebody by the wrong pronoun.  Near as I can tell the net result from eight years of the Obama Administration is you can now decide where you want to pee.  So we "normal" people just try and keep our heads down low and avoid attracting attention from "the authorities."  

But back to the cruel joke my soon-to-be wife played on me.  I told her all I wanted out of a relationship was a dozen cars.  She told me all she wanted was a dozen kids.  I said, "Sure, that sounds fair!"  Except, nobody told me you can't have a dozen kids and a dozen cars at the same time!  I'm not even sure you can have one car when you have even one kid here in CA anymore!   

Cars are expensive.  Let's start with the gas tax here.  We pay $0.62 a gallon more than the rest of 'Murica.  Why?  Because they can.  But kids are WAAAAAAAAAAAAY more expensive!  I had no idea that my kids would consume 112% of my entire income for a period of about 22 years.  My deal with my dearly departed wife was simple:  I'd make the money, and she'd spend it.  Yeah, turns out we were both pretty good at our jobs...

Turns out I made tons of money.  And she spent tons and tons of money.  And right smack in the center of that tsunami, that torrent, nay, that all-out-Hoover-vacuum-cleaner-suction-attack on my bank account was a thing called "braces."  My dentist readily admits he was put through Berkeley by the money we paid his orthodontist dad for installing braces on my kids.  All at the same time...

And then there's stuff like prom dresses.  And limos.  And college degrees.  And marriages.  and marriages!  Did I tell you that guys are for some strange, never-be-known, archaic, medieval, unintelligible reason are expected to pay for their daughters' weddings?  Perhaps it has something to do with olde tyme customs such as dowries. Did I tell you that?  Well, they are.  And I was.  

However, my wife managed to get at least half of the last two weddings paid for by the grooms' families, which I'm led to believe was something of a custom-breaker.  So what could have been a retirement-wounding $120,000 outlay turned only into two-thirds of that.  Yeah, I know.  How lucky can one guy get?

The Good News is that I discovered I could become an ordained Minister of the Gospel here in crazy CA.  For a $5.00 fee I managed to be able to marry off the last two daughters and saved a bundle.  With Dana, I walked her down the aisle, turned around, asked the assemblage, "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?  I then turned and said, "Her mother and I do."  And then I turned once again and proceeded to conduct the ceremony.  Heh, heh...

But back to the severe gash that daughters can put in your net worth.  There's apartments and cars and first houses and so, so much more stuff that I can't even remember.  All I can remember is that the harder and longer I worked, the poorer I became.  In money.  But in daughters?  I was a very rich man.

That's what Elaine kept telling.  "You're car poor and daughter rich," she would say.  And then she would laugh.  Out loud.  Yeah, I felt a lot better after that...

I'm told by dads of sons that they are cheaper.  But how would they know?  I'm guessing guys are pretty expensive too, what with broken bones and speeding tickets and bailing them out of the local hoosegow.  I know that I would rather have had twelve daughters than one son like me.  I mean, I was hustling pool on the road at the ripe old age of 16.  How'd you like to try and parent that?  But hey, I keep telling myself that there was no real difference in the cost of raising boys and girls.  But you know that I know, that you know that I know, that that's just so much crap... 

Anyway, after the raising is done, and the last daughter has flown the coop, and the job is supposedly finished, it isn't.  Daughters need their moms --- forever.  I don't know if sons do, but daughters definitely do.  They need info from mom, sometimes daily, about all the important things in their lives, and how to cope with them.  Love, sex, marriage, kids, birth, finance, and finally, death. 

I've learned that guys and gals get together to do a lot of stuff, but mostly they grow their own friends.  They start having kids, because, I don't know, because they just need to.  The wives honor their womb "clock" that's ticking and the only scratch for that itch is to give birth.  To raise them into their friends, and usually, as in my case, into a brood.  A tribe.  An entire team.  And the guys?  They just pretty much go along with whatever their wives want so long as they are left alone and keep getting laid. 

And I've learned one more thing:  I used to think I'd do something really big in my life.  Something important.  Something Earth-shaking.  And then one day I had an epiphany.  I finally came to realize I already had.  I raised four daughters.  And all of them are, and will continue to do something Earth-shaking in my stead.  

So, after the sweat from work has cooled on the brow, and there's nothing left in a life well lived but memories, I'll have mine.  And I wouldn't sell them for anything...

Including a dozen cars...