My youngest child is now twelve. I was fifty when she was born, a child of my second marriage. There are six preceding her ranging in age from forty-six down to the twelve-year-old. The forty-six year-old was one of the unaccompanied minors out of Vietnam in 1975; that puts me at twenty-eight with an eleven-year-old who didn't speak any English other than "hello" and "no sweat." The youngest still at home, as I best recall, was born talking in complete sentences, a vocabulary replete with "I want everything," which, naturally, I have tried my best to accommodate. Were she your child, you'd do the same.

A child at fifty almost made me a geezer dad. That's a guy who heads for the store for Pampers, becomes confused, and returns with Depends. Continue Reading »