God Bomb

Years and years before I became a parent, before triplets were ever even on the radar, an old friend from school was sharing with me about the joys of being a new father. I was skeptical about the whole thing, but I remember his eyes lighting up talking about how parenthood forces a sort of welcome evolution inside of you.

“Before you have kids, you have the luxury of flirting with all kinds of ideas about the person you want to be, what you believe about the world, about politics, about spirituality. You try out different philosophies like shirts in a store, never really committing. But then kids come along and you have to make decisions. ‘What do I really believe? Who is God?’ Because you’ve got these little people looking up at you and they want to know how it all works. You’ve gotta give them something.”

The friend in question was (and still is) a minister in the Midwest and I didn’t have the heart to tell him in that moment that that didn’t sound like such a screaming good time. I like my cynicism. I’m comfortable there. Did I need kids coming in like spiritual wrecking balls, forcing a same-page session on faith and all things unanswerable? Thanks, no, pass.

But, you know, I can’t say he was altogether wrong. And speaking from experience, if having children introduces a sort of God-pressure into your life, having both living and non-living children multiplies that pressure. Twelve years of well-intentioned notes and comments reassuring you about your “angel babies looking down from Heaven” will eventually give pause to even the most bull-headed. Because, seriously, where are my boys? Are they anywhere? “Heaven?” A 7D supercontext? 

Or are they just gone?

I have a handful of friends who are in the process of what intellectuals call “deconstructing.” In plain terms, they’re taking the faith assumptions of their youth, unscrewing the bolts, laying out the component parts and picking through them. What’s needed, what’s surplus. Maybe more than that, interrogating whether the machine itself is helpful for anything. Never mind whether any of it’s true, is my faith doing anything good in the world or does it mostly exist to keep itself running?

My wife and I identify ourselves, broadly, with Christianity. We attend a non-denominational church. We pray, we take communion. We even teach Sunday School (in fact, I taught a lesson on Peter and Cornelius this morning). If, at the moment of my death, I find myself filling out a Heaven application at the pearly gates, mine will look something like this:

Religion:
[x] Christianity – Non-denom

On a 1-10 scale, how sure are you that your religion is the one, true religion?
[x] 1

Describe in 50 words or less why you should be considered for this position.
– Team-oriented, goal-oriented, problems are opportunities for creativity. Greatest weakness is I sometimes work too hard. Refs attached.

Here’s the dirty truth: I don’t know how it works. I don’t think I’ll ever know, in this life, how it works. And no offense, but if you’re telling me you know beyond all doubt how it all works, I’ll nod and hear you out, but I’ll probably secretly find your surety disingenuous.

So all I have is what makes sense to me. Being honest, that’s all any of us have. Angel babies, apologies, doesn’t make sense. Eternal hellfire for believing the wrong thing based on incomplete information doesn’t make sense. An unending afterlife experience based on choosing the right denomination of the right faith system doesn’t make sense.

So what does?

Kindness. Love. Inclusivity. Forgiveness. Caring for the vulnerable. Sharing what you have. 

And here’s where I offend a portion of my constituency: if your path to all of the above doesn’t happen to include a guy who died on a cross 2,000 years ago, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I think you’re fine.

For some who know and love me, I promise I don’t mean to break your heart. But I have to tell you, June 4, 2011 was a hell of a day. In my commiserations with my deconstructing friends (at least a couple of whom have also experienced a hell of a day), I’ve returned to a raw truth: some have experienced terrific tragedy and some haven’t. If you’ve managed to avoid tragedy, your expectation that everyone should land where you landed on all matters spiritual is a little unfair. Some of us have seen shit you haven’t.

But, again: kindness, love, inclusivity, forgiveness. I don’t need you to say the right thing to me, I just want you to care. Even the Angel Baby People mean well. It’s all good.

Last year I wrote about Job and my much-hoped-for, fingers-crossed, six-kid reunion in the sweet hereafter. It’s my hope that I haven’t seen the last of Rudyard, Desmond and Oscar, that our time apart is a blip compared to our eventual time together. I want it to be true. I want it so much that my brain ejects all other possibilities like Tom Hanks from a volcano. I want it and I choose to believe it.

But, reasonably, I don’t know.

My beliefs have evolved in twelve years and I expect that will continue. I mean, it has to, right? Of course I have to concede that maybe it really is all about angel babies and neverending hosannahs and everything Aunt Dianne ever embroidered on a throw pillow. Maybe that single set of beach footprints was Jesus carrying me all along.

But I don’t know. But maybe. But I don’t know. But maybe.

In 2023, I’m 47 years old and the current state of my personal spiritual evolution is: pending further revelations and/or introspection, I’m choosing to believe in something greater, something better. Something that involves the kindness and the love and the inclusivity and the forgiveness.

Whatever the case, it’s been twelve years since my sons came and left. I love them and miss them. One day we’ll be together again. One day I’ll have it all figured out. One day I’ll find out, once and for all, the truth.

Unless I don’t.

I’ll end with Grant Morrison quoting The Smiths expressing my great, unprovable hope. Peace and love to all.

The Job Conundrum

When I was 29, I was mad at God, so I wrote a play.

There’s something about turning 30 that winds up being your first, hard look at your own mortality. You realize, as your youth begins to wane, that you won’t be here forever. You can sort of get away with pretending that death only comes to other people and it probably won’t ever come to you. But 30 is a crack of lightning that wakes you to the truth that this whole thing isn’t slowing down and there’s only so much time to do what you’re going to do, to become who you’ll become.

So I gave myself the challenge: I was going to write a play about God while I was still young, giving myself the deadline of the day before my 30^th birthday to finish it. It was meant to be a metatextual attempt to understand God and why he allows so much terrible in the universe.

I focused on Job. If you’re unfamiliar with the bible story, God and The Devil make a bet that Job, a righteous man, will turn from God if God allows tribulation into his life. A lot of awful shit happens to Job, including the death of his children. He stays more or less faithful (but not without some questions); he passes the test. God blesses him for it, including riches and compensatory replacement children.

This made me crazy. How could God do this? How do replacement children make up for the children Job lost? Is that how it works? Who did God think he was?

I finished the play, just under the wire. It’s a little clunky and derivative, but I’m still kind of proud of it. Though I was in preliminary talks with a producer at one point, it was never performed.

And no, of course I had no idea that I would lose my own children five years later.

---

Today I get to write the entry I’ve been trying to write for at least three years.

In 2016, we began the journey of foster parenting with a four-year-old named Christopher. In 2018, his biological sisters, Chloe and Chelsea, also came to live in our home. And last summer, August of 2021, we officially adopted all three children.

A handful of rigid laws have restricted us from sharing our kids’ names or images over the years, but now that they’re adopted, we’re finally free to share.

---

Chloe Bear is 15. She’s finishing up her freshman year at the high school from Freedom Writers. She’s quiet and private and she loves animals and Harry Styles. She’s been vegetarian for over a year and, about a month ago, decided to go all-in on veganism. Unlike most girls of her generation, she’s laser-focused on getting her driver’s license as soon as possible. She’s interested in social justice and reads books about murder.

---

Chelsea Bear is 14. Unlike her sister, her favorite food is steak. Her dream is to be a rich and famous actress with a giant house, a swimming pool and a waterslide. Her favorite musician is Taylor Swift and her favorite books are teen drama graphic novels by Raina Telgemeier. She makes friends easily and feels that the social media restrictions Carey and I force on her are unreasonable.

---

Christopher Bear is 9. He’s the most buoyant, joyful kid I know. His favorite activity is video games that involve building and destroying. His COVID lockdown hair continues to grow and is now the longest of anyone in our house. He plans to stop when it reaches the same length as Elsa’s from Frozen. He sleeps to the sound of thunderstorms playing on a loop. When he’s happiest, he does a dance that involves skipping around and smacking his own butt.

---

---

It was easier to rail on the idea of God providing compensatory replacement children before I had three of my own. I love my kids and I wouldn’t trade them. And I’m not naïve; I know they wouldn’t be in our lives without the loss of our triplet boys.

But the question I’m not supposed to ask is: “Was it worth it?”

The truth is my six children live in conflicting realities and I’m grateful I don’t have to choose. Call it Job’s Conundrum, I guess. Did we really need the soul crushing trauma of losing Rudyard, Desmond and Oscar to enjoy the blessing of Chloe, Chelsea and Christopher?

Is there any value in asking the question?

As I’ve said before, the universe determined, despite my early protests in literally every case, that my wife and I would be parents and the number of children would be three. Resistance is futile. Give up and give in. All your base are belong to us.

So that’s it. I guess it’s exactly as complicated as that. Content yourself with messy (and don’t kid yourself – messy is what we are). Love your family. Rejoice in the blessings of three kids brought to our home through trauma and tragedy.

And one day, in a thousand years’ time if you believe in that sort of thing, when we’re all slipping up and down the silver-paved byways of the sweet hereafter AllNow 7D supercontext, we’ll look up the Job residence on Heavenly GPS. Drive on over, knock on the door.  Swap stories, meet his kids. Introduce him to our six.

Pour drinks. Raise a glass. “To the Job conundrum,” we’ll say. “To the great mess. To being together at last.”

“It all worked out in the end.”

Deca

1: Update

I’ve mentioned this in past updates, but my wife and I are foster parents. In 2016, we began fostering a 4-year-old boy who’s now an 8-year-old boy. In 2018, two of his biological sisters (now 13 and 14) joined us. We never planned on 3 children, that would be too much serendipity. But the Universe, unsympathetic to our aesthetic ideas on thematic arcs, said, “No. You’ll parent three. Three is what you’ve been prepared to handle. It has to be three.”

As I type these words, we’re in the final stages of adoption. Without revealing anything that might put us in legal murkiness, the duration of our childrens’ particular case is in record-breaking territory. All told, our kids have been dealing with impermanence for nearly 5 years and we’ve spent the majority of that time working to change that. We’ve been playing The Long Game so long, we sometimes forget there’s an eventual finish line.

We love them like crazy. We’re so proud of them. They’ll be adopted soon. We can’t wait.

---

2: Asshole Hat

When I began this online journal 10 years and a handful of months ago, the term “blog” wasn’t yet regularly inspiring eye-rolls, but the internet marches on. Nevertheless, this wasn’t my first blog and I’d learned a couple of lessons from previous blogs that I decided to bring to Tips On Triplets.

The biggest lesson: stay on topic. This was never meant to be a spot for silly cat videos or career self-promotion or political meanderings. This was meant to be a parenting blog about the unique experience of having and raising triplet children. Sure, there’d be art, there’d be storytelling. Tone: mostly light and funny with the occasional swollen-heart moment. Then 6/4/2011 happened and TOT quickly transitioned into a blog about grief.

While I’m very politically opinionated, I made the decision right from the jump that I’d leave politics out of my writings here. Conservative, liberal and anything in-between, I didn’t want to alienate my readers by spouting off about gun legislation or socialized healthcare. I might care deeply about how you vote and what you believe, but, I decided, this blog wouldn’t. All were welcome, particularly parents, especially triplet parents.

That said, 2020 was a hell of a year and, throughout, I found myself embroiled in many debates about topics that were thrown into the spotlight by COVID-19. In particular: masking, social distance and vaccines.

I’ve watched in horror as well-meaning, loving friends (most of whom are parents themselves) drank the Kool-Aid of Personal Liberty, choosing an entitled sense of “freedom” over health, safety and love for their communities and families. In my weaker moments, I’ve derided and lashed out directly at these people, losing friendships in the process.

“What am I doing?” I’ve sometimes thought later. “No one has ever been scolded into changing their stance on anything. What’s my endgame here? I’ve sacrificed relationships and convinced exactly no one. Am I part of the problem?”

And the thing I’ve come to recognize is this: I have an admittedly low tolerance for parents who are unable to consider a reality in which they might one day be sitting where I’m sitting.

Or, putting on my asshole hat to say it more plainly: You’re not invulnerable. Your loved ones are not invulnerable. It can seem inconceivable that the universe is so cruel a place that the people you love most would be taken from you. In a way, I’m happy for your naiveté. And the last thing I want is to inspire people to live a life of perpetual paranoia. But ten years ago today, I sat in a tiny room with my wife and experienced a reality I was never built to handle. And that reality, I promise, isn’t eager to salute you for playing fast and loose with your health, the health of your loved ones, or the health of your community.

This isn’t a political blog, but nevertheless: Listen to the experts. Honor the science.

Vaccinate yourself and your family.

---

3: Ten

Speaking of that tiny room, I recall a question forming in my brain that day that I’d wind up asking myself often in the ensuing weeks and months:

How will I feel in 10 years?

And it looks like, somehow, 10 years is here.

I wondered if it would still hurt as much as it did that day. (It doesn’t.) I wondered if it would still hurt at all. (It does.)

I wondered how people keep moving with their lives, how publicly it was appropriate to grieve, how soon was too soon to think about more children, what this meant for my career, what other people who have gone through similar circumstances do to cope. I wondered what a soul is, where Rudyard, Desmond and Oscar were and how much they understood.

Etc.

And while lots has happened over the past ten years, I’m surprised at how recent June 4, 2011 still feels. I remember Dr. Chao examining my wife, turning to the nurse and saying, as poker-faced as she was able, “Do you understand what you’re looking at?” I remember Carey’s breathing. I remember the nurse who cried as I cut Rudyard’s umbilical. I remember the quinoa salad Katherine dropped off at the hospital for us. I remember the smell of the boys. I remember my dad’s voice on the phone when I told him. I remember using my phone to update the blog with this entry, my sons’ bodies two feet away. I remember our pastor friend, Jerry, smiling sincerely and saying, “Oh, look at them,” before pronouncing a blessing on three boys who had been dead for hours.

Truthfully, I’m grateful that this still hurts, ten years later. It seems strange to say, but I hope it hurts forever.

I’ve mentioned this before, but the profundity of the insights, over 10 years, have flattened. I wish I had new wisdom, but I don’t think I do. I still miss them, still wish they’d lived, still dream of three troublemaking 10-year-olds in our house. I’m wondering if they’d be complaining about having to wear masks to school on their birthday. I’m wondering how well they’d get along with the three we’re adopting.

And I wonder how it’ll be at 20 years. Or 30 years. Will I always do this? “Would Desmond be married by now?” “Would Oscar be an accountant?” “Which one would have had children of his own first?” Will I always speculate on what might have been?

I really don’t know. I suppose I’ll continue taking it a year at a time.

But for now: Rudyard, Desmond, Oscar. I met you and said goodbye to you 10 years ago today. I’m still proud of you boys. Your mom and I still remember, still think of you every day.

Here’s to a decade of loving and missing you.

Children Who Exist and Children Who Don’t

A friend and I were talking recently about fatherhood. He mentioned that, before he had children, he’d always had a feeling that there was a part of himself that would be incomplete if he missed out on it. He knew it had to be part of his life, part of his journey.

I told him I couldn’t relate to that at all.

In fact, my pre-children mindset was just the opposite. I felt a profound burden to not have children, to not bring more people into this. I felt that the Earth has been asking us for the last several generations to slow down, chill out, give her a break with all the kids. We need to catch our breath with the destruction of the environment. We need to get a handle on racism and poverty. We’ve had our foot on the gas so long that we’ve failed to realize the engine isn’t working anymore and we’re flooding it. 

MORE KIDS MORE KIDS MORE KIDS.

My friend, like me, is a foster parent. He has biological children of his own, but also made the decision with his wife to foster-to-adopt. “I feel you,” he said. “It makes sense. Children in the system, that’s where the need is. Loving and taking care of who’s already here.”

“That’s my thing,” I said. “I want to contribute to the healing and the building. I had three children that were biologically mine and they died the day they were born. They existed and I loved them and I still love them. But they were a surprise. And I couldn’t help it, I wondered if they would wind up hurting the world more than helping.”

Then he dropped the bomb: “I love [adopted child] as much as [biological children]. I didn’t think that was possible, but it is. If I’d known that, I wonder if I’d have made the choice to have biological children at all.”

—

I’m writing this in 2020, on the ninth birthday of Rudyard, Desmond and Oscar Bear. These annual entries have become letters to the future, a check-in to be rediscovered later.  Here’s what’s happening as of this moment, Star Wars opening crawl-style:

Turmoil! The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged, terrorized, quarantined and suffocated the global community.

In America, George Floyd, an unarmed African American man, was killed at the hands of panicked and angry police officers, sparking protests, riots and unrest, further polarizing a nation at war with itself.

All of this is presided over by a corrupt President who, most recently, teargassed peaceful protesters to clear a path for a photo op of him holding a bible in front of a church….

Maybe these are the ashes, the fertilizer that will one day accommodate the seeds of new life and new hope. Maybe this is a ramping-up to ultimate destruction. Too soon to tell.

But before any children of my own existed, this is the world I didn’t want to bring them into. I didn’t want to burden them with it, or it with them. Back when my children were a possibility, a concept that I could say “no” to, saying “no” made the most sense to me.

But sometimes there are surprises. And sometimes those surprises turn out to be spontaneous triplet boys. And when the switch happens, when children transition from ideas to flesh and blood, the whole thing changes. “Should they exist?” Asked and answered. 

Yes, they should.

I still believe in Heaven for Beginners, which means I believe that the Bear Boys are looking at all of this with perfect clarity and understanding and love. Love for me and my wife and our three foster children. Love for George Floyd. And Derek Chauvin. And Donald Trump. And everyone everywhere for all time always.

And maybe they’ve been spared all of this. Maybe it’s a mercy. Maybe there’s some sort of cosmic right-ness to birthday candles on our mantle rather than birthday candles on three cakes today. Fuck that, but maybe.

But we’re having the conversations in our home that we would’ve had with our boys, had they made it. And not to get too creepy, but I sometimes sort of feel my boys guiding us through it. Look, I know, go ahead and eye-roll, but no kidding around: I want their perfect perspective on Coronavirus and privilege and BLM and the environment and every so often I wonder if they’re helping to give me a glimpse of what’s good and true. Maybe, in my better moments, I get to be their voice.

I’m glad they existed. I’m glad they weren’t an idea I said No to. I’m glad they made the jump from conceptual to literal and are teaching my wife and I how to best love the three flesh-and-blood children in our home, right here and now.

But more than any of that, today, right now, I wish they’d lived.

The Littlest

The four year old I wrote about a couple of years ago is a six year old now. He’s still with us; we’re still fostering him. In fact, his two older sisters are, as of last summer, with us also.

(Yeah, we’ve done the math. I promise, we didn’t plan for three. It just accidentally happened. Maybe more on that another time.)

I’ve mentioned our June 4 ritual in the past, pointing out that it doesn’t always go to plan. It’s the closest thing my wife and I have to an honest-to-goodness sacred moment in our calendar. We don’t miss it. If it’s a work day, we clear our schedules and take the day off. We mean business.

This morning, the six year old was curious, so we let him join in our candle lighting. He was puzzled: “Why is that candle so little?”

I told him, “I guess it is little. It’s appropriate, though, because this candle is for Oscar and he was the littlest.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know who Oscar is?”

“No.”

“Remember how we told you about our three baby boys? Today’s their birthday, so we light candles for them. That one is Rudyard’s candle and that one is for Desmond. It’s 8:40, so that means it’s time to light Oscar’s candle.”

“Look how little it is.”

“It is pretty little.”

“Jeremy.”

“Yes?”

“Did they die?”

“Yes they did.”

“Why?”

“Well, sometimes babies are born too early. When that happens, the babies have a hard time breathing and all sorts of problems. That’s what happened with these three.”

“I don’t have a candle.”

“No you don’t.”

“I’m not dead.”

“No, you’re not and I’m very happy about that. For one thing, that means we get to celebrate your birthday in other ways that are more fun.”

He seemed satisfied with that.

Eight years into grief, the profundity of the insights begin to wane, alas, and I wish I had more to say than that this time, but I don’t. The red moments still come and when they do, they bite. I miss my boys. They should be here now, trashing our house, causing trouble.

And eight years in, the cards and texts and “We love you and we remember” calls still touch us. Thank you for sparing a thought for our three.

The Birthday Brothers

In his kitchen, the ice snaps as he pours a substantial swallow of vodka into a glass and squeezes in an orange. Sipping, he gathers more ice from the freezer, drops it onto a washcloth on the counter, folds it and presses it against his neck, which is stiff. And he smiles.

He sits alone at his kitchen table in the evening cool, taking a moment, organizing his impressions of the day. But after barely a minute, A looks up to see his brothers standing in the doorway. His face falls and he finishes his drink.

“I didn’t think it was so late. The day went too quickly,” he says.

“Yes,” says C, “we felt the same.”

“Please,” says A, “sit. Can I fix you a drink?”

“I wouldn’t mind. Whatever you’re having,” says C.

“I’m not sure I’m old enough,” says B.

A opens a cabinet and grabs two more glasses. “If we are, you are,” he says. He pours drinks for his brothers, refills his own: vodka, ice, orange squeeze. The brothers clink cheers and drink.

“It’s good,” says C.

“I don’t like mine,” says B.

A nods. “Like Daddy,” he says. “I don’t think he liked vodka either.”

“Tell us about your day, Brother,” says C. “What’s with the ice on the neck?”

A reclines and massages his own shoulder. “Oh, my daughter. Today I taught her to drive. She’s 19, but she’s avoided it until now. ‘I’ll never use this, Dad. It’s all autonomous now. It’s not like when you were a kid.’ Anyhow, she’s jumpy on the brake and my neck is paying the price.”

“A daughter!” says C. “What’s her name?”

“Gertrude. ‘Gertie.’ I have a son too. Five years old. He cried when I brushed his teeth too hard.”

C grasps A’s hand and smiles. “Yes, continue! What else?”

“What else. Well, the day was chilly, but in the afternoon, the sun shined and it was hot on my head and on my arms. When I first saw my daughter, she hugged me and my nose and eyes filled with the smell of her shampoo. It was very pleasant. There was a leaf on my car’s windshield before I drove to my job. The color of the leaf was a very deep, dark green. I suppose it made me a little sad. Maybe it seemed as if it belonged back in the tree with its brothers.”

“Yes, maybe,” says C. “What’s something that made you happy?”

“My shoes made a sound as I walked on a stretch of gravel in a parking lot. That made me happy, the crunch-crunch. I think you would love it if you heard it. Also, this morning I drank coffee, which I enjoyed very much. It was sort of bitter. But a good bitter. My coffee had milk in it and that helped. I hope I can have it again next year.”

“Coffee,” says B. “That’s a beverage, I think. A drink.”

A removes the washcloth from his neck and drops the ice into the sink. He fixes his eyes on a slate sky on the other side of the window, light sinking lower. Across the street, a house blinks out of existence along with a lemon tree in the front yard. “Yes, it’s popular with other grown-ups like me. At least I think so. My thoughts on it are already fading, so I’m not sure.”

“And your age?” asks C. “Which birthday is it?”

A thinks. “Oh. Forty-eight? I want to say forty-eight.”

C turns to B and says, “What about you, brother? Which birthday was it for you?”

B beams. “Thirteen. I watched television programs on my tablet. Most of them were funny. I ate breakfast with Mommy and Daddy. Mommy made my favorite: strawberries and French toast.”

A winces. “I miss Mommy.”

“I miss Mommy too,” says C.

“Yes. There was a picnic,” B continues. “The school year is over and there was a picnic to celebrate the start of summer and uh. My, you know, friend. Aron. He told me he had gotten me a birthday present, but he wanted me to open it down on the beach. So we left the group and walked toward the water. Our feet were in the ocean a little bit and Aron started talking about how he liked how brave I am and how I’m not afraid to take chances and then he held my arms with his hands and he kissed me.”

“Was the water cold?” asks A.

“A little. I guess it was cold.”

“Did you like being kissed by Aron? Did it make you happy?” asks C.

“I don’t know. I keep thinking about it. It’s a partly happy and partly nervous thing for me to think about.”

“What are strawberries like?” asks A. “I didn’t have any today.”

“They’re sweet but also a little tart. They’re very red. With sort of seeds on the outside. Mommy slices them.”

At that moment, three vodka oranges with ice disappear from the kitchen table.

“And what about you, Brother?” A says to C. “Which birthday? What happened?”

“Fifty-nine,” says C. “I took a shower this morning, which is when the water comes out of the little holes and there’s soap and it makes you clean.”

“I know showers,” says B, raising a hand.

“I know showers too,” agrees A.

“I rode on a train for awhile,” says C. “It was very fast and didn’t seem to touch the ground. There were screens and lights and a VR harness to keep me occupied in my seat, but mostly I looked out the window. I saw deserts and trees and two different rivers. My wife slept on my shoulder. A thing was on my lap. An urn.”

A and B nod.

“I spent part of the day with both of you and our wives and husband. We walked to the end of a long pier to p-pour ashes into the sea. Thuh-that’s, that’s what grown-ups do sometimes when, hnn, when p-people die and…” C’s throat knots, his face grows hot and tears swell in his eyes. He buries his head in his hands.

A and B exchange looks. The refrigerator disappears.

A says, “Brother?”

“It’s Mommy!” cries C. “Mommy died months ago!”

And the triplet brothers begin to wail. Wracking, spine-shaking sobs as the kitchen sink faucet pops away to nothing, causing tap water to shoot from the plumbing and onto the counter and floor.

“NO!” bawls B. “NOT MOMMY!”

A crumples to the ground, holding his knees to his chest. “MOMMY WAS THE BEST! SHE LOVED US! SHE FOUGHT FOR US!”

The chair beneath C evaporates, sending him sprawling. “THAT’S RIGHT, SHE DID! MOMMY FOUGHT FOR US!”

“OH MOMMY!” wail the brothers.

The cabinets dissolve, smashing the dishes they contained onto the counter. Floor tiles and cutlery, glasses and Tupperware, oven racks and skillets blip away as if they were never there to begin with.

Through tears and snot and saliva bubbles, C rakes his fingers through his hair: “Shuh-shuh-she, shuh-she was so sad. We talked about how sad Mommy was at the end, how she w-wanted to go to Heaven be with D-D-Daddy and she, and she…”

“I DON’T WANT THIS!” cries B. “I WANT ANOTHER DAY WITH MOMMY!”

“Those aren’t the r-rules, though,” says A. “You know the rules.”

“I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!”

“Maybe say the rules, Brother. It’s best,” croaks A, face wet.

“NO!”

“Once a year…’” says C.

“NO!”

The kitchen table and remaining chairs disappear. C and A right themselves and sit cross-legged, joining hands with B and with each other, swallowing sobs. B shakes his head as, more and more, memories of the day blink from his brain. B bows his head and whispers.

“Once a year,
the children too soon gone
are granted a day
to experience a taste
of a life they never lived.”

And bit by bit, item by item, the remainder of the kitchen is uncreated. Dish fragments and glass, sink water and silverware. The oven. The ceiling. The walls and windows. The floor. All vanishes to still and infinite white.

The triplet brothers who shared a womb, fingers interlocked, hang in the center of The Fluidity, The Peace, The AllNow, The Grand Everything.

“Day good,” says B, as best he can. “Pretty and beauty and want more.”

“Miss warm and Mommy. Day good, but miss Mommy,” says A.

“Happy share brothers,” says C. “Happy always with brothers.”

The three drift, soon bodiless. Baby A, Baby B and Baby C, held safe by an umbilical as big as the universe. They travel to where the other children are waiting. And not just children, but grown-ups too. Friends and loved ones and neighbors and strangers and animals and even Mommy. And everything that ever was and ever could be.

There they ruminate and speculate and confer.

And they begin the wait for their next birthday.

---

 

Dedicated to the fighting Mommies of children too-soon-gone. 

Back to One

ME: Days off are hard to come by. I was hoping for a little more fun and relaxation when I put in to take today off for my birthday a couple of weeks ago.

CAREY: I know, but Little Man is sick and can’t go to school. That’s the way it goes.

ME: I’m not trying to complain, it’s just a bummer. Stuck at a Pediatrician’s office.

CAREY: Well, maybe later this evening we can do something fun.

ME: Really?

CAREY: Yeah. We can all watch a kid’s movie together. Then we can play that owl board game he likes so much.

ME: …

CAREY: What.

ME: Nothing.

CAREY: What.

ME: Well, those things aren’t fun.

CAREY: I know, but Little Man is sick. That’s the way it goes.

 

She’s right. That’s the way it goes these days. When you have a four-year-old living under your roof, your schedule is more or less spoken for.

You know? I should rewind a little.

My triplet blog has become a reliably annual affair. It’s not that I don’t think about it throughout the rest of the year. It comes to mind often. Six years ago today, we met and lost our triplet sons Rudyard, Desmond and Oscar. I think of them every day and even now I’m occasionally hit with a surprise pain, almost no warning. Gut shot in the middle of a meeting or during my morning commute. You grit your teeth and ride the red wave. You get through it.

And even though grief is never really, truly over, a few years ago we made the decision to move ahead to the next thing. We’d try again. We weren’t, as they say, getting any younger.

Admittedly, my heart was only half in it. And maybe nature knew, because, after about a year and a half, it became clear that our prime fertility years were behind us. Specialists assured us we were ideal candidates for all manner of treatments and procedures and Just say the word, you’ll be in Healthy White Baby Country lickety split.

But on that issue I was firm. My personal philosophy was such that expensive, medically heroic measures in the name of fertility were difficult to justify in these troubled times. Literal millions of children are in desperate need of loving homes inside our own borders, not to mention the profound need overseas. Understand, that sentiment isn’t meant to indict or alienate my good friends who have participated in fertility treatments (all great, loving parents). In fact, the vast majority of triplet parents in the world partly owe their full quiver to advancements in fertility science. But for me, personally, I couldn’t do it.

So, then… what? Overseas adoption? Foster care? Maintain our DINK status and run out the clock, insulated by disposable income?

I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow of the months and years of vacillation, the tears, the arguments, the starts and stops. In November, we completed our certification and became foster parents to the coolest kid I’ve ever met, a tow-headed four-year-old. I wish I could share his name, his face and his story, but alas.

Carey and I love him. Truly and honestly. When I looked at the remains of my boys six years ago, I remember my own heartbreak about the fact that they’d never grow to become strong, healthy men with big hearts and wise souls. But I look at this kid each morning and it’s my continual prayer for him. “Create in him a clean heart and renew his spirit.” My biggest priority is helping him become the sincere, confident adult my own boys never had the chance to be.

But here’s the thing, and this shouldn’t go unsaid: when we mention our Foster Parent Adventure to people who know about our story, they’ll often give us a satisfied smile and a knowing nod that seems to say, “Yes. That makes sense.”

I promise. It doesn’t.

This journey is the exact opposite of intuitive. Take two reasonably intelligent adults who met and lost their three children on the same day and offer them the chance to involve themselves in a situation that will almost certainly end in tears and heartbreak. A situation fraught with added stressors in the form of court dates, mysterious behavior issues and government accountability. And that’s not even mentioning the surreal experience of saying the word “yes” on a phone call and, two days later, having a four-year-old you’ve never met with issues and traumas and stories you have no idea about dropped off at your house.

“Thanks for parenting him. We’ll let you know when it’s time to give him back.”

It’s a beautiful and difficult thing. I always wondered what sort of a father I would be and I’m finally finding out.

(On a scale of Awful to Awesome, I’d rank my current dad skills at an “Iffy” with signs of slow improvement.)

Again, though, this kid is amazing. I could go into detail, but to sum up: his life is difficult, but he loves it anyway.

Six years ago, I wondered what my future life would be. Could we find or build a situation that would replace what’s lost, that would fill the hole?

Nope. No dice. But maybe that’s okay. This is a whole other thing. A scary, weird, unnatural, fun, frustrating, exhausting, hilarious, ridiculous other thing.

Places, everyone. Back to one. Let’s change things up a bit, try some improv. Everybody set? Still rolling? Sound speeding. Quiet, please. And:

Action.

An Actual Tip

It’s not inconceivable that part of the modest traffic that this blog manages to attract are new and expectant triplet parents. Maybe, like me years ago, you’re trawling the internet, looking for wisdom and advice about how to handle the task of having and raising three individuals at the same time. Well, today I’m going to try something I haven’t attempted in an awful long while: an actual tip, as it were, on triplets.

But since this is TipsOnTriplets and nothing’s easy-breezy, before I get to the advice, I’ll start with a story. I like to call it My Greatest Moment As A Triplet Parent.

Triplet pregnancies are fraught enough, but Carey’s had the added peril of Lupus, a condition she’s lived with since college. Every moment of our boys’ gestation would need close monitoring, which is what took us to Long Beach’s Magella Medical Group, specialists in high-risk pregnancies.

As you might expect, I had a jones to document everything with an eye toward eventually cutting together a highlight video of the pregnancy and eventual birth of the boys. I was on the lookout for odd moments, hopeful moments, important moments… anything that could communicate the nervous frenzy of the time, assuming we’d one day appreciate the look back.

So we arrived at Magella Medical Group for our initial consult and tests, a situation ripe for the video reel. And since the idea of producing a video had only occurred to me a few days prior, this was going to be one of the very first moments of the eventual edited piece. So I got to work grabbing b-roll of the building, the sign, the elevator ride up to the office. I imagined all of this cut together montage-style atop a heart-swelling music bed.

We entered and I was getting footage of everything, no matter how mundane. Carey signing in. Carey’s blood pressure being taken. No moment too small.

We entered an exam room and an office supervisor told us to have a seat. I pulled out my phone to grab a shot or two of Carey getting situated. The office supervisor said, “Just so you know, we unfortunately can’t allow any video taken here in the office.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s one of our rules. I could explain all of the liabilities behind it, but suffice it to say it’s our policy here.”

“What about photos?”

She hesitated. “Photos are ok, maybe just a couple. It’s video we can’t allow. It looked like you were about to record with your phone, so I have to mention it.”

I thought about it for maybe two seconds. It made sense: an office specializing in high-risk pregnancies meant they’d likely seen quite a few pregnancies go badly. Failed pregnancies = angry parents = looking for someone to blame = “evidence” gathering, however legit, however spurious = legal battles = headaches the Magella Medical Group would just as soon avoid. I should also point out that the good people at Magella are as smart and conscientious as they come. It’s a wonderful place and we were lucky to be there. “I get it,” I said.

And that’s when My Greatest Moment As A Triplet Parent happened:

I lied.

“No problem, I won’t take any video. Maybe just a couple of photos.”

As reasonable as the Magella Medical Group’s policy on video capture was, it was a rule I just wasn’t going to follow. Sure, I thought, I could respect the wishes of the office. It’s their space, they get to decide what’s allowed. On the other hand, I pictured myself a decade in the future, me and three 9-year-olds huddled around a laptop. I would play the video their dad shot when they were still in the womb, showing how excited their parents were to meet them, how committed we were to taking every precaution to keep them safe and healthy.

Or I could tell them the story of why we didn’t have any video because we followed a lame f&%#ing liabilities rule.

The office manager left the room and I started shooting. And that’s how the rest of the morning went. I caught some great moments: The doctor telling us how the placentas work. Our hearing their heartbeats for the first time. Poring over ultrasound prints, relating to the camera what we’d just found out about our then-healthy three.

And stern looks from the staff. “Nope, just lining up a great photo moment,” I’d tell them, video rolling.

Of course, the video I really wanted to make was never made. But I did use the Magella footage in the memorial video I cut together after the boys passed. And you know? It’s not only my favorite moment in the whole memorial video, it’s footage I wouldn’t trade for all the riches in the whole wide world. While it was the postmortem footage of the boys (4:40) that caught the interest of The Daily Beast, BBC World Update and Good Morning America, it’s the Magella material (1:01) that makes my heart the happiest. Because there it is, in full-color, living, breathing, 24 fps shaky glory: two expectant parents who love their children more than anything, full to the eyeballs with excited, terrified, nervous anticipation. That’s the real stuff. That’s where life is.

Ok, that was quite a wind-up to get to the point of this post and the reason we’re all here: a Tip on Triplets. So here it is.

As a triplet parent, nature has already decided to chuck your special ideas about the traditional way of doing things right out the window. You have to wing it, you have to make it up as you go along. And the world is loaded with rules and philosophies about how you’re supposed to handle these three little aberrations.

These triplet children of yours are a messy, imperfect miracle. Listen to what the critics and the experts have to say. Take it in. Consider carefully. But keep in mind:

These children are yours. You make the rules.

That’s really it. You get to decide. If you need to go rogue, man, go rogue. This isn’t twin parenting and lord knows it sure as hell isn’t singleton parenting. It’s a whole other thing that demands reserves that John and Jane Q. Public don’t fully understand.

If you need to shoot the video, god’s sake, SHOOT THE VIDEO.

Go nuts. It’s up to you. The status quo was miles back, do your own thing.

That’s all.

(But, you know, within reason. Vaccinate your kids. I mean what are you, a bunch of toothless hill people?)