On Father’s Day of 2022, I didn’t have any children. On Father’s Day 2024, I have four little boys.
We had been expecting the first boy in 2022 — the identical triplets, born earlier this year, were a surprise.
When you tell people you have triplets, the first thing they ask is whether you underwent IVF.
For the record, you can engineer fraternal twins or triplets via IVF — you just insert two or three embryos at once.
Identical triplets just happen.
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Identicals are what happen when you and your wife talk about how you wish you’d met earlier in life so you could have had a bigger family, and God, who listens and has a sense of humor, says: “All right, big shot — let’s see how you do.”
That first ultrasound appointment was memorable.
We knew my wife was pregnant, and, thanks to a mail-order test, we had good reason to believe she was carrying a boy.
The technician fired up the device and then — after reassuring us that she saw a baby and a heartbeat—she called the doctor on the telecom.
“Is it twins?” the doc asked. “You only call me in when it’s twins.”
“I don’t think it’s twins.”
Of course, I bought a Powerball ticket that evening.
Statistically unlike things were afoot.
I can feel you looking at the picture, there, the headshot that runs with this column.
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Yeah — 51 years old.
That’s not quite Saul Bellow-level late-life fatherhood — he was 84 when his last child was born — but it’s older than Bill Burr was when he had a kid and got the idea for making “Old Dads.”
My four little ones are a good deal younger than my brother’s grandchildren.
That’s a big social fault-line: When I was living in New York in my late 30s and early 40s, my Manhattan friends were mostly just starting families, whereas my South Bronx friends of the same age were often grandparents.
My brother was a grandfather before he was 40 — if my oldest boy waits as long as I did to have children, I’ll be . . . 98.
The other questions people ask: Are you getting any sleep?
Yes, though the older boy went through a pretty tough adjustment period during which he was up several times every night.
We brought the babies home from the hospital one at a time, and by the time the third triplet was there, big brother must have been wondering how many were in the pipeline.
How do you cope? Babysitters. Lots of them.
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I don’t worry about the cost of putting four kids through college, because I’m more or less putting four through college now, and it’s a bargain.
How many diapers do you go through?
I honestly don’t know, but between the diapers and other mostly baby-related Amazon deliveries, it’s more boxes than our municipal recycling authority will haul away.
Some parts are harder than you expect, but a lot of it is less difficult than you’d imagine.
Mostly, it’s a pleasure.
I’m adopted, and so, until I had children, I’d never met anybody to whom I was actually related.
There’s something about looking down and seeing four little faces that look like yours staring back.
Of course, you know that’s going to be the case, at an intellectual level, but there’s a big difference between knowing it and living it.
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Having four children in less than two years heightens the sense of gratitude: for pedestrian but essential things (like the fact that I make a good living and can afford those babysitters), for friends and family and our church, for having a wonderfully competent and deeply good wife who makes up for many of my obvious deficits.
But, mostly, for the fact that I get to take care of these four little men.
They are delightful.
I didn’t have a happy childhood myself, and I worry that I’m going to be a Clark Griswold, trying to force my family into some kind of conventional, Hallmark card version of domestic tranquility, making everybody miserable in the process.
I do not have the strongest kind of religious faith, but I do hope that the same God who blessed us with these children will not object too strongly to my daily prayer, which I’ll make twice on Father’s Day:
“Please, Lord, don’t let me f–k this up.”
