The Aluminum-Foil Pickle

Prologue - 1986
Chapter 1: And Baby Makes Five - 1987-88
Chapter 2: Abigail's Day - 1989
Chapter 3: Little Bug And Little Brick - 1990
Chapter 4: Three Little Happy People - 1991
Chapter 5: The Lost Year - 1992
Chapter 6: The Lean Year - 1993
Chapter 7: The Last Year - 1994
Chapter 8: The Week of December 19, 1994
Chapter 9: Afterward
Epilogue - 1995
...but life goes on

This is my children's story. I am telling it because I think it deserves to be told, and no one left alive knows it better than I do. It's also my story, because my children changed my life as surely as I affected theirs. To a lesser extent, it's the story of a marriage that failed, and a blended family that didn't blend. But I haven't said much about these things, because that's not why I wrote this book.

God gave me seven and a half years to be Abigail's daddy, and four and a half years with Joshua and Rebecca. In that time, I changed more diapers, spooned out more strained carrots, gave more baths, and dried more tears than I ever knew existed. I also laughed, gave horsey rides, shared my cookies, and received the honest, unconditional love of the three most beautiful children in the world. These memories are my treasures, and I cannot be so selfish as to keep them to myself.

As you read this, I hope you will come away feeling that, in some way, you have come to know my children, even though you never had the chance to meet them. But most of all, to you who are raising children of your own, I hope one message comes across, louder and clearer than any other:

Love them like there's no tomorrow, because sometimes, tomorrow never comes.

Prologue - 1986

Nora had been married ten years to her first husband, Danny. Following his accidental death a year and a half ago, she had joined a religious sect in Dorchester, but their strictly regimented life was not for her. She happened to meet Linda one day, and was offered one of our spare rooms so she could have a place to get her life, and the lives of her two young daughters, back together.

They joined us in the late afternoon of an unseasonably-warm January day, aided by Nora's brother John Giesselman, his wife Monique, and two other friends of theirs. Phil had warned us that, after enduring an abusive husband, dealing with his death from a drug overdose, and fighting free of the smothering influence of the Dorchester sect, she probably had little mental energy left for levity, and that we should refrain from our usual round of puns, quotes from Monty Python's Flying Circus episodes, and good-natured verbal jabs at one another. But as we all sat around the huge dining-room table, someone made a comment that roused a Monty Python line from John —

"And there was much rejoicing."

Everyone at the table made the appropriate response: a half-hearted "Yay!" Phil looked embarrassed.

Nora and I got along surprisingly well. She was on one of her health-food kicks at the time, and was drinking a tea she made from hops. She said it tasted bitter, but was good for you, and that one of its alleged side effects was to reduce the libido. I slipped a handful of green M&M's into her jar of hops one day. She had never heard of the alleged effects of green M&M's, but once Dennis explained it to her, she laughed harder than he did.

Sarah was about to turn six years old, and Rachel was days from turning four. I hit it off with them almost immediately. I made a fishing game out of sticks, string, clothespins for hooks, and cardboard fish. They would sit on their top bunk and dangle their lines over the side, and I would lurk on the bottom bunk, putting fish in the clothespins and tugging on the lines. Sometimes I'd clip on my car keys, my glasses, or a small stuffed animal, just to make them laugh.

Rachel was precocious, no question about it. She had inherited her father's super-genius IQ; Nora told me she was speaking in complete sentences at age one. One day after church, as we sat in a restaurant, she went around the table and told us the meanings of our names. "Sarah means 'princess,'" she began, "and Rachel means 'little lamb,' and your name is Mike. That means 'tasty beverages.'"

Sarah was more standoffish, but her affection for me was just as real at the outset. When one of our roosters scratched her leg, I grabbed a water pistol and a trash-can lid (to use as a shield), and chased that rooster all over the front yard, hosing it down with the squirt gun and getting it as mad as a wet — well, rooster. Sarah clapped and cheered.

In early February, Nora pulled me aside and, convinced I would reject her, admitted that she was very attracted to me. Me? The guy who hadn't been on a date in five years, the guy who had struck out with every woman I was ever interested in? I never stopped to consider exactly how I felt about her — her attraction for me made her incredibly desirable, and I was sure the rest would fall into place.

I proposed to her in the last week of February. I was 25; she was 30. It was probably the quietest proposal in history. My voice failed completely, and I could only mouth the words, "Will you marry me?" She didn't even try to answer, but nodded vigorously. We hugged and kissed, and then asked the girls what they thought. They were all for it.

That was probably the high point of our relationship. Nora was suffering from a seizure disorder at the time, and I put a lot her subsequent anger down to mood swings, which could hopefully be controlled by medication. We had several bitter fights about the children; she threw down her engagement ring and stormed off at least twice. I found it easy to forgive her as long as I thought it was all due to her seizure disorder.

We married on June 7, 1986, and left for a two-week honeymoon at Lake Winnepesaukee, NH. We didn't exactly start off on a high note: she came down with the chicken pox on our wedding night.

Somewhere shortly after the second week, we experienced what might politely be called a "contraceptive failure." As soon as Nora knew she was pregnant, she went off her seizure medication; the seizures disappeared at that time and never returned. That's when I learned that her anger wasn't all seizure-oriented. I had grown up in a subdued home where emotional displays were unheard of. I didn't know how to deal with this.

Our fights grew more bitter. I felt she was far too lenient with the children; she resisted any suggestions from me and accused me of spending all my time on my personal computer instead of with her. Sadly, we were both right. She was also catching flak from the other members of the community farm, who tended to side with me, and the pressure was too much for her. In August, after two and a half months of marriage and one fight too many, she called a cab, packed her things, gathered the girls, and left me to rejoin her sect in Dorchester. From then until the day the results of our contraceptive failure arrived, I saw her only twice.

Chapter 1: And Baby Makes Five - 1987-88

"Nora had a baby girl this morning. Do you want to come down and see her?"

"Yes! Absolutely!" I exclaimed — did they really think I wouldn't want to see my own baby?

Monique went on to tell me that her name was Abigail, and that Nora would expect me around 10:00 the next morning, and that none of her family would be there, so there wouldn't be any unpleasant scenes in the hospital room. I thanked her for calling, broke the news to my housemates, and began planning my trip from Lyndeborough, NH, to Providence, RI, to see my daughter for the first time.

I picked up a mutual friend named Monica the next morning and headed for the highway. But I took a wrong turn and passed four exits before I realized my error. Afraid that Nora would be angry and turn me away if I was late, I pushed my little Honda Civic up past 80 mph in my attempts to make up lost time. I rolled into the parking lot of Women & Infants Hospital, left Monica to park the car, and sprinted for the elevators.

It occurred to me afterwards that, because I'd seen Nora only twice since the separation, I'd had no chance to follow the pregnancy. So when I walked into that hospital room, it was as though the tiny person in her arms had appeared out of nowhere, as if by magic. I felt as though I were standing on holy ground; I think I might have tiptoed in.

Nora looked okay, if a bit tired. Lying in her arms was an 8-lb 5-1/2 oz mix of her and me, sound asleep, her little feet sticking out from under the blanket. I fell totally, hopelessly in love with that baby on the spot, and I knew it. (Nora knew it, too. She told me afterward that the look on my face made her want to throw her arms around me and hug me, but she wasn't sure how I would have reacted.)

Nora made small talk, describing her labor and delivery. She said the first thing Abigail did after being born was to stuff her entire fist into her mouth, then pick up her head and look around. "Strong baby," the doctor had said.

I gratefully accepted an offer to hold her while Nora ate her lunch. I tried to adjust the receiving blanket to cover her tiny feet, but she was such a long little thing that she just wouldn't fit. I remember asking about the tiny white specks on her face; Nora said they were called "milia" and that they'd disappear in a few days. I also recall worrying that her hands were deformed somehow, because they stayed inside the blanket and I didn't get a chance to look at them. But mostly I just stared at her, marvelling at how tiny and beautiful she was.

The visit ended before I was ready; Nora's parents wanted to visit her, and she thought they and I wouldn't mix well. I handed my little daughter back to her mother and quietly left, not knowing when I'd be able to see her again. My heart was aching already.

- # -

I wasn't too keen on the name Abigail, and I told Nora so on the phone a few days later. "All the Abby's I've ever known were homely, chubby, and pushy," I complained.

"Her name isn't Abby, it's Abigail," Nora corrected me firmly. "The name means, 'source of joy,' and I'm sure that's what she'll be."

Either way, there was nothing I could do about it. My daughter's name was Abigail Elizabeth Fischer, and that was that. I later learned that her name could also be interpreted, "her father's joy." Both translations turned out to be perfectly accurate.

- # -

I was invited to John & Monique's house in Attleboro, Mass., to visit Nora and the kids — Nora had moved in with them after leaving the Dorchester cult again. Abigail was so tiny, and I think she slept the whole time I was there. Nora asked if I would want to reconcile. I said yes, most emphatically, I did want to get back together. She and the Giesselmans were looking for a larger place to live, and when they found one, that would be a good time for me to move to Massachusetts.

I visited them once more in that house. They had found a bigger house for rent at 12 Alden Drive, and had signed an agreement with the landlord to move there in a week or so. We toured the house and decided who would sleep where, then returned to the house in Attleboro. Sarah and Rachel played with me outside for a while, until it was time to go. I wanted to kiss Abigail goodbye, but she was sound asleep in her crib. So tiny, so beautiful, so helpless... I fell down on my knees next to the crib and cried out loud, "I don't want to leave!" Thankfully, I didn't wake her.

- # -

We all moved into 12 Alden Drive in April of 1987. My housemates in New Hampshire had agreed not to hold me responsible for my share of the mortgage on the farmhouse — they thought it was more important that I try to repair my family. (They bought out my share of the farm within a year, leaving me free and clear.) John and Monique lived downstairs, converting the living room into a bedroom by erecting a home-made closet across the entryway. Nora and I lived upstairs in one of the three bedrooms, with Abigail's room next door and the older girls in what probably was meant to be the master bedroom.

Nora and I still didn't know how to get along with each other. Her brother and sister-in-law tried to stay out of it, but that was difficult when we lived under the same roof, and staying neutral was impossible when their sister was involved. Their relations with me were polite but distant.

I tried again with Sarah and Rachel. It was an uphill battle, but I won a few small victories. I wrote half a dozen computer games for them, including one with a split screen so they could both play at once, but not compete against each other; it quickly became their favorite. Sarah was learning to ride a bicycle at this time, and once when she fell off and hurt herself, she wanted me, not Mommy, to carry her into the house. But they knew Mommy was mad at me a lot, and that meant I could never truly win their hearts.

Abigail's little personality was already emerging. For one thing, she was very curious. This meant that, when it was time for her to nurse, Sarah and Rachel had to leave the room, and sometimes I left as well, because the slightest sound or motion would distract her and stop her from nursing. But once she began in earnest, she would twirl her little foot back and forth; we took that as a sign that she was contented.

I couldn't nurse her, of course, but I did just about everything else that a daddy can do for his little girl. Under Nora's well-practiced eye, I quickly learned to change diapers with all kinds of things in them, run a bath at the right temperature, and get a squirming baby into a clean pair of pajamas. Nora didn't have to talk me into it — it seemed obvious that she was my daughter, too, and I ought to play a role in caring for her.

I vividly recall the day she discovered how to splash in her little tub. She was about four months old. Nora and Monique had gone out shopping together, and it was Abigail's bath night. I set her tub on the bathroom counter, as we had always done, and filled it. After shampooing her hair, I sat her up in the tub to rinse her off. She brought both hands down into the water, and was delighted with the resulting splash. She did it again. And again. And again. When Nora and Monique returned, the bathroom was almost awash, I was drenched from head to toe, and Abigail was still splish-splashing away, a very serious look on her face. From that day on, we put her tub inside the full-sized bathtub, and kept an extra towel or two on hand.

- # -

When it was time to get her up from her nap, we would open the door a crack and ask, "Is there a baby in here?" That was her cue to smile and perk up, because we were about to "rescue" her from her crib.

Nora discovered a game that we never quite understood. She would hold her and say, "Peep, peep, peep, peep, peep!" in a high-pitched voice. Abigail would break out in a huge smile and flop her head onto her mommy's shoulder, then sit back up and wait for Nora to do it again. She didn't do it for me very often; maybe she thought it was a game for mommies only.

She certainly had her own ideas about who was allowed to do what. The main rule seemed to be, "Mommy rocks, Daddy walks." I could not get her to sit still in a rocking chair with me, regardless of her mood, while she would sit and rock with Nora for hours. But when she wanted to be held and walked around the room, Daddy was the only one for the job. That suited Nora, who didn't have the endurance for the kind of walking I did. I wouldn't want to count the thousands of laps I took around the coffee table in the dining room with a little girl in my arms.

A small lamp was hung from the ceiling above that table, and I had to hold Abigail so she could look at the light. If I changed directions because I was getting dizzy, I had to shift her to the other hip so she was still facing toward that light. I walked her to calm her for naps; I walked her to relax her for bedtime; I walked her when she was sick; I walked her when she was cranky; and sometimes I walked her just because I wanted to hold her and walk with her.

She had her own way of being held, too. She'd grab a little fistful of my shirt in each hand, rest her head on my shoulder, and stick her big toe in my navel. Before her teeth came in, she used to gnaw on my collarbone, which was a very strange sensation. I quickly put a stop to that when she cut her first incisors.

To Nora, bedtime was a chore she rarely had the energy to tackle; to me, it was a special treat, a chance to spend time alone with my little one. After she had been fed and changed, I would take her upstairs, darken her room, and start walking back and forth with her. She would snuggle up tight against me, and would usually drop off to sleep within five or ten minutes. I'd keep walking for a few minutes after that, to make sure she was in a deep sleep before I laid her down. Her little face, shnuzzled into my shoulder, was so tiny and beautiful! Her love and her trust for me made me feel warm inside; it felt good to be needed. It also reminded me of the responsibility for her that I carried. I began to wonder how I could protect her when she started school, when she began to learn to drive, when she started dating — no, forget that one! No boy was ever going to lay a finger on my little girl!

I quickly learned how important traditions and repetition are to a small child, and I formulated Mike's First Law of Parenthood: "Don't do anything with a small child that you aren't prepared to do thirty times in a row." We had our set ways of doing things at mealtime, at bedtime, at bathtime, you name it; and Heaven help us if we departed from those traditions! She wouldn't eat without a steady procession of toys across the tray of her high chair. She wouldn't sleep without her blanket and without being walked for a few minutes. She wouldn't be bathed without a certain few tub toys. And when the bath was done, I had to wrap her up from head to toe in her towel, with just her face peeking out, and then exclaim, "Ooh, a papoose! I got a papoose!" and do a little dance in front of the bathroom mirror. I did it once, and she liked it, so I had to keep doing it. Okay, I enjoyed it, too — I'd do anything to see her smile.

- # -

Abigail's physical growth proceeded in very much the normal way, except that she remained big for her age. She crawled at around eight months, pulled herself up to a standing position in her crib at ten months, and walked at eleven. Before she learned to walk, she frequently pulled herself up to a standing position on furniture, and then cried for help because she didn't know how to get down again.

One day, the two of us were romping on the floor together. She was learning to walk, but still crawled when she wanted to get somewhere. I was lying on my back, picking her up, "bench-pressing" her, and doing other things that daddies do with their little ones. Suddenly she wiggled out of my grip, crawled up onto my chest, pinned my shoulders to the floor with her hands, stuck her grinning face right into mine, and said, "Gzh!" She probably meant "Gotcha!" I broke up laughing so hard that I think I scared her; she never did it again. But whenever I think of Abigail as a baby, I think of "Gzh!"

As her walking improved, she discovered a game that seems to be common to most little girls: leading her daddy around by one finger. If she wanted me to see something or get her something, she would grab me by a finger and take off, and she nearly dislocated a few knuckles when I didn't follow fast enough. Then she discovered the spin game. I would stand in the middle of the room, and she would hold a finger and orbit me at full speed. I would have to reverse the direction from time to time as I got dizzy. She never got dizzy, and would keep orbiting until I dropped.

Then there was the trusting game. That's the one where the child stands on a chair or other piece of furniture, and falls forward on purpose because she knows you'll catch her before she hits the floor. Abigail certainly trusted me, as evidenced by the dozens of times a week that she played this game. It certainly felt good to be trusted like that; it seemed to be a sign that I was doing something right as a daddy. But it got nerve-wracking to have to stand close by her every time she climbed up onto something, in case she felt like showing her trust without warning me in advance.

Another passion of hers was dancing with me. I'd hold her on my hip, turn on the stereo, and dance around the room like a whirling dervish on pep pills. The more leaps, spins and dips I made, the more she liked it. I'd usually work up a good sweat before she decided we were done.

She also loved being read to, long before she could really understand the words. "Hop on Pop" was an early favorite, and the inspiration for another game of hers. If she found me lying on the floor, she would step onto my stomach and grin at me. That was my cue to recite, "We love to hop/We love to hop/We love to hop on top of Pop." At that, she would start jumping up and down on me, until I finished, "Stop! You must not hop on Pop." And she would stop. Then she'd get down, run around me, and climb back on for another round. A good set of abdominal muscles kept me from getting hurt, but I had to make sure she outgrew that game before she got big enough to do damage.

We also played a head-shaking game together, usually when she was sitting in her high chair. I would smile and nod my head "yes" to her. She'd smile and shake her head "no." I'd nod "yes," and she'd nod "no"... and this could go on for five or six minutes without exchanging a word. Just smiles.

One night, her bedtime approached and I suggested to her, "I think it's bedtime. You must be sleepy." She shook her head "no."

"You look pretty sleepy to me." She shook her head "no."

"Are you saying 'no' to everything I say?" She smiled and nodded "yes."

Yet another "game," which she outgrew all too quickly, involved copying Nora's exercise videos. You haven't lived until you've watched your eighteen-month-old daughter lying on her side on the floor, trying to do leg-lifts like Jane Fonda.

And, like any child, she liked playing with blocks. Actually, I did most of the playing. Her role was to watch me make a block tower, and when it got high enough, she'd knock it down, at which point I had to say, "Boom! Down go the blocks!" and start again. For some reason, I felt driven to make elaborate towers with windows and turrets, knowing that their destiny was to land on the floor like all the others. But it made her smile.

- # -

Nora was on another of her health-food kicks at this time, and we both agreed it would be a good idea to avoid giving our toddler junk food. All of Nora's health-food friends told her, "If you never give it to them, they'll grow up without any interest in it."

Don't you believe it!

The first time Abigail got a whiff of fast-food French fries, she refused the dry cereal and raisins on her high-chair tray and reached for the stuff she wasn't supposed to have any interest in. She practically inhaled them; we couldn't put them on her tray fast enough. We called her the "fry girl" after that, because, once she knew fries were nearby, it didn't matter what we tried to tempt her with — she wouldn't touch a bite until the fries were all gone. We couldn't fool her by hiding them, either; her nose was too good for that.

- # -

With each of my children, there came one moment when they stopped simply copying Mama and Papa, and began anticipating what we were going to do. To me, that marked the end of the toddler stage and the beginning of childhood.

Abigail loved popcorn. She would drop whatever she was doing as soon as she heard the noise of the hot-air popper, run to me in the kitchen, and put her arms up so I could pick her up and hold her. Then, as the first few kernels popped out of the popper, she would lunge forward, grab them out of the bowl, and devour them. Once the whole batch was done, she'd wait patiently while I poured the melted butter and sprinkled a dash of salt, because we had a tradition: Abigail got her own little bowl of popcorn, and the rest of us ate out of the big bowl.

One evening, I asked her if she'd like to help me make some popcorn. She followed me into the kitchen, watched me set up the popper... and got a bowl out of the cabinet and brought it to me. I hugged her, kissed her, and praised her to the skies, making sure she knew that she'd done the right thing. Getting the bowl was her job from that day on.

- # -

As with any baby, the real breakthrough for her was learning to talk. Her first sounds were "Ba, ba, ba" and "Pa, pa, pa," but her first real word was "Mama," followed closely by "Papa." I had thought babies were supposed to say "Da-da," but Nora told me that the "P" sound was easier for little mouths to learn to say, and I'd have better luck going by "Papa." She was right, and I'm glad I listened.

Like any child, she learned by copying what she heard. If Nora had been yelling out the window for Sarah, Abigail would go to the same window and call, "Arah!" Her other sister's name always came out "Aiken," to Rachel's disgust.

One day, my little one was toddling around, saying "oikey." I was baffled; what did she mean? Usually, Nora could interpret her babytalk better than I could, but this time, she wasn't sure. I tried following her around to see if her actions would give me a clue. She wound up in front of the refrigerator. Then it dawned on me — she'd just finished eating a piece of sliced turkey from the deli.

"Turkey?" I exclaimed, excited at my discovery.

"Oikey," she agreed with a smile. I quickly gave her another slice of turkey, which she downed as quickly as she did the first one. That was a breakthrough for both of us; she learned a new word, and I learned the joy of communicating with my daughter. From that day forward, I listened very hard to her chatter, trying to pick out what she was trying to say. Sometimes it was just nonsense, to be sure, and I never did acquire Nora's knack for understanding small children's speech, but each newly-discovered word was like a treasure, a link in the growing chain that enabled Abigail to talk to me.

She had her own ideas about words from time to time. One of her favorite games as a toddler was for me to take her out on her big sister's scooter in the parking lot in front of our house. I'd plant her feet on the footboard, put her hands on the handlebars, and then climb on the scooter myself, putting my hands over hers and gripping her between my knees when I wasn't using one leg to push the scooter. Her face never failed to light up when she saw the prospect of a bike ride like this; she loved whizzing around the parking lot with me.

But she wouldn't call it a "bike". For reasons that we never figured out, she called it a "bop." Nothing we said or did could sway her from her insistence that this was its name.

"Abigail, say 'bike,'" Sarah would plead.

"Bop," would be the reply.

- # -

When we went shopping in department stores, Nora would often hand Abigail a toy to keep her busy. She'd sneak it away from her before we got to the checkout. It worked, as long as Abigail didn't chew on the toy.

But one day in Bradlees, Nora gave her a stuffed puppy. When the time came to sneak it away from her, Abigail would not let go. We tried to distract her, we tried to sweet-talk her — forget it. She clung to that puppy. We had to choose between breaking her heart and spending money we didn't have. Abigail got her puppy. It remained a favorite of hers for almost a year.

- # -

My daughter broke my heart one day. We had just returned from church, and I had unbuckled her from her car seat. I slung her up on my hip to carry her into the house, just as I'd always done.

But not today. She wiggled, pushed away from me, and protested, "Wanna walk."

I was crushed! My baby! I turned to Nora and moaned, "She doesn't need me anymore!"

Nora just grinned. "She's getting older and she wants to be independent. Do you still want to be carrying her when she's sixteen?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed. "And when she gets married, I want to carry her down the aisle." I knew she wouldn't stay a baby forever, but it was a bitter pill to swallow, nonetheless. I reluctantly put her down, and she clambered determinedly up the front steps without looking back at me.

- # -

Abigail wasn't always an angel. Like any child, she sometimes had to be brought up short. When she was small, our preferred method was the slap on the back of the hand, but it didn't always work.

One day, she was knocking books off the grown-up bookshelf. She had her own shelf with her books on it, and we were trying to teach her to play with those and not with ours. I walked over to her and said, "Abigail, no!" She ignored me and knocked another book off the shelf.

I slapped her hand, not very hard. She ignored that, too. I tried again, a little harder. But it obviously wasn't hard enough; she turned to me, with an annoyed look, and slapped my hand. That was the end of that lesson. I picked her up and carried her away from the bookshelf — holding her head beside mine so she couldn't see me holding back my laughter.

One day, she brought me a book about child discipline for me to read to her. I protested, "Abigail, I don't think you want me to read this book to you." She pushed it at me.

I tried again. "Abigail, this book isn't a kid's book. There aren't any pictures in it." Again, she pushed it into my hands. So I gave up, flipped the book open, and began to read.

"'As you begin to faithfully discipline your child, you set her free to be the person she was meant to be —'"

"Aww done!" she interrupted, snapping the book shut.

Then there was the occasion when she didn't want to turn off the light in her sisters' room. She was just tall enough to reach the light switch, but it was a strain, and she apparently didn't want to be bothered with turning this particular light off again. Nora wouldn't let her leave the room until she obeyed; Abigail began crying because she didn't want to obey. I stood nearby, ready to intervene if Nora asked for my help. Finally, she ordered, "Abigail, obey your Mama!"

Abigail turned to me, tears streaming down her face, and cried, "No, obey Papa!" Maybe she thought I would rescue her; I was sorely tempted. But I couldn't undermine Nora's authority. She finally took Abigail's hand and turned off the light with it. Abigail ran past both of us and hid until her mood improved.

In spite of these and other misadventures, it was clear that Abigail had a very deep desire to be pleasing to us. She almost never threw tantrums, and she rarely misbehaved the same way twice. She sailed through her "terrible two's" and three's, and well into her four's, before the usual childish rebellious streak began to appear, and it didn't have much effect on her behavior.

The downside to this was that she was overly sensitive to being wrong. All through her life, any time she got a scolding, no matter how mildly worded, she would run and hide for a time, and only reluctantly would she come out and play again. The few times she had to be spanked, she faced it with such reluctance, and such obvious desire to not repeat her offense, that I was tempted to skip the discipline altogether.

But I had always believed that a daddy should keep his promises, whether it was a good promise like, "You can have some ice cream if you finish your supper," or a bad promise like, "If you don't obey me, you're going to be disciplined." I always explained this to her before a spanking, and she seemed to grasp it. At any rate, her "spank-worthy" transgressions got fewer and fewer with the passage of time. We didn't stop corporal punishment because she was too big; we stopped because she just didn't need it.

- # -

John and Monique bought a mobile home and moved out during 1988. It was a good move for them. They needed space, and John was sometimes mildly annoyed when Abigail pushed all the buttons on his VCR. For me, it was a relief — there were two less people in the house to take Nora's side. For her, it was a mixed blessing. Although she could run the house her way now, she missed her sister-in-law's companionship and moral support. She began turning to Sarah and Rachel for help in her fights with me, which infuriated me beyond reason.

Abigail tried to be a peacemaker. She toddled into the middle of one fight, climbed onto the couch where I was sitting, and covered my mouth with her little hand so I wouldn't say any more mean words. It broke my heart to see her caught in the middle, and I let the argument end.

I wish Nora or I could have learned something from that.

Chapter 2: Abigail's Day - 1989

To her, any animal that roared was called a "rah," because that was the noise they made. Lions, tigers, bears, dinosaurs — they were all rahs. We tried to help her break things down a bit more specifically, by explaining that there were two kinds of rahs: nice rahs, like the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz, and bad rahs, like lions in the zoo that she should never touch. She got the picture, loud and clear.

One afternoon, she and I were playing with Play-Doh in the kitchen, while Sarah and Rachel were playing Nintendo in the living room. Rachel did something displeasing to Sarah, who lit into her verbally. Abigail listened to this outburst for a few seconds, then, very seriously, informed me, "Sarah bad rah."

On another evening, I was giving her a bath. She asked me for a dry wash cloth to wipe some water out of her eyes. I looked in the cabinets, which were right next to the tub, and told her, "There are no dry wash cloths, Abigail. They're all dirty."

She considered this for a moment, then pronounced her verdict: "A bad rah did it." A moment later, she passed sentence: "Mama spank bad rah's bum!"

- # -

Most of our little rituals were things I did to be silly, which she liked enough to want me to repeat. But she created at least one of her own. One bath night, after I was done shampooing her hair and getting the rest of her clean with the wash cloth, she took the cloth and asked, "Papa, I wash your arm?" My arm didn't seem that dirty, but I rolled up my sleeve and held my arm out over the tub. She diligently rubbed it with the wash cloth, then asked for my other arm. This became a part of our bathtime rituals. It was very important to her to do this for me, and if I forgot, she would always remind me. It pleased her to know that her Daddy's arms were clean.

- # -

She learned a lot from her older sisters. Rachel was annoyed by her curiosity, and often tried to keep her out of her and Sarah's room. If Abigail tried to follow her in, Rachel would order, "Stay in this room!"

Abigail soon knew what this meant, and decided to try it for herself. She took me by the finger and led me into the dining room. "Stay in this room, Papa!" she ordered. "Stay in this room!"

I sat down obediently. "Stay in this room!" she said again, and turned to leave. Then, before I could so much as draw a breath, she turned and shook an angry little finger at me. "Don' you know 'stay in this room' means?!"

Around this time, I realized that, someday, I would want to remember scenes like this, and that I couldn't count on remembering everything. So I took to writing down the cute or poignant things Abigail said, filing them away in one of my notebooks. I figured that, years from now, when she was an obnoxious teen-ager, I could look back and remember when she was little and sweet.

- # -

My receding hair line wasn't a matter of great concern to me, because I never cared much about my appearance anyway. To Abigail, it was just another feature on my head, and she saw to it that, if I ever wanted to take my baldness seriously, she'd be there to take the wind out of my sails.

Nora and I were playing a tickle game with her one day. The two of us were sitting on the dining room floor. She'd dash in from the living room and run up to me; I'd grab her, tickle her for a moment, and let her go. She'd flee to the living room, then dash in again and run up to Nora, who would do the same thing. She took several laps back and forth like this.

Then she ran up to me. I grabbed her, but before I could tickle her, she gently slapped me on top of my head and crowed, "NO HA-AIR!"

Nora literally fell over on the floor laughing. I just sat there, dumbfounded, trying to stifle my own giggles and gradually failing. Abigail made a clean getaway, but returned to enjoy the hilarity she'd caused.

Like many children her age, she decided that, while she still needed some help getting dressed, she wanted to do it standing up like a big girl. This raised the problem of how to keep her from falling over when I put her socks on.

"Abigail, hold onto me so you don't fall down," I would instruct.

"Okay, I hang onna you bal' head," she would agree. Never just my head; always my bal' head. This went on for months, until she learned to put on her own socks. Maintaining my dignity was out of the question after that.

- # -

When we went to church, one of us had to keep her company in the toddlers' nursery, because she would cry without ceasing if we left her alone. We tried to break her of it, sneaking out for a few minutes at a time, but she wouldn't hear of it. I was usually the one who stayed, with the result that all my friends in that church were under the age of three.

As long as I was there, Abigail played contentedly, trying out new toys, learning to share. She liked to wiggle into a toy wagon that was far too small for her, and I'd pull her around the room. The other children thought that was a fine idea, and I'd wind up pulling them all, one after the other. For a man who once had no confidence when it came to handling small children, I had a ball.

One little boy took a real liking to me, and grafted himself onto my hip the moment I walked into the nursery. Abigail didn't mind that, because my other hip was free for her if she wanted to be walked. But one day, there weren't enough nursery workers to hold all the crying children, so I picked up a hysterical little girl on my free hip and tried to calm her down.

Her tears were just starting to dry when I noticed Abigail, standing against a wall, staring at me. Her eyes were wide with shock, and she was covering her mouth with both hands — the classic picture of the jealous woman who'd caught her man cheating. Then she ran into a corner and covered her eyes. I quickly put down both of my passengers and picked her up; after all, this was my Abigail! It took ten minutes of walking before she would even look at me.

- # -

She used to get up early in the morning to talk to me before I went to work. No matter how quietly I went about my morning preparations, I almost never got out the door without her knowing about it. I decided to make the best of it and prepare breakfast for her, so Nora would have one less thing to do when she got up.

At some point, Abigail noticed that my lunch bag always had a few chocolate-chip cookies in it. This pleased her very much, because she knew I had a hard time refusing her anything if it would make her smile. But these things had to be done a certain way.

"Papa, gimme hookie inna bag," she would ask. She wouldn't take the cookie unless I put it in a plastic sandwich bag, in the same way I made my lunch. She would take it out and eat it at the kitchen table, so the bag did her no good. She just wanted to do it like Daddy. After the cookie was gone, she would tell me what she wanted for breakfast — typically cold cereal with milk, a waffle with syrup, or an egg cooked in the microwave.

She asked for a waffle one day, and watched me pop it into the toaster. She tried to stand on tiptoe to see what was going on, but she wasn't tall enough, so I picked her up and held her so she could see inside the toaster. She looked, and described what she thought she saw: "Waffle takin' a bubble bath in there."

On another morning, she got up early enough to watch me make my lunch. I was making a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and she apparently had never seen chunky peanut butter before. She watched for a moment before asking, with great interest, "Ooh, Papa, you got eyeballs on your bread?"

Yes, I ate the sandwich anyway.

- # -

Her speech development was about average for someone her age, with the usual childish deviations from "perfect" English. She called herself "Baby" until she was almost two-and-a-half years old — "Baby want juice!" She also went through a period of confusing her pronouns, saying "my" instead of "I."

She was going through all her clothes one Saturday afternoon, putting on the outfits she liked and coming downstairs to show us. After the third outfit, Nora commented, "You're quite a fashion plate, you know that?"

Abigail laughed at her mother's silly mistake. "My not a plate!"

- # -

Possibly one of her finest moments came on a Saturday morning when I was in the basement, doing the laundry. The basement was unfinished, and while both ends were built on concrete slabs, the middle of the floor was nothing but dirt. Our washing machine was on one of the slabs, and I was stuffing dirty laundry into it when Abigail hopped down the stairs to join me.

She stopped short of the dirt floor, because she didn't have shoes on. The damp dirt floor seemed to intrigue her today; she began asking me about the mud.

"Is it clean mud? Is it nice mud? Is it dirty mud?"

The questions came so thick and fast that I knew she wasn't really looking for answers. But while she was asking me all this, she was energetically flapping her left arm. Now I was curious: had her hand fallen asleep? Was she waving to a bug on the wall? Was she trying to fly?

Finally, I asked her, "Abigail, what are you doing with your hand?"

She smiled at my innocence and answered, "I moving it up and down!"

- # -

Nora was a very cautious, protective parent, and I learned to follow her example. We never let the kids out of our sight when they played outside in the yard; this usually meant one of us was out there with them. When it was my turn, I often seized the chance to play with Abigail, or maybe she seized me. She had a game she played next to the house, which I called "up the hill, touch the wall, turn around, and come back," because that's what she did, and I had to say it in that order. If I didn't , she'd stop and wait for me to continue. I added a variation after a few months; when she came back to me, I'd grab her and toss her up in the air — but not too high, because she was afraid of heights. She didn't play this game with anyone else. It was good for my arm muscles, and it made her happy.

Another outdoor game involved a long, stiff board, probably a leftover piece of scaffolding from when the carpenters had covered the house in aluminum siding. I would position it with one end on a slight rise in the ground, so the center was suspended like a bridge, and Abigail would run up and down on it, enjoying the bounce in the middle. It bucked her off once or twice, but she got right back on and kept playing.

I got into the habit of rounding up the sticks that fell off our trees and throwing them onto a brush pile at the side of the yard, to keep the yard clear for fast-moving children who didn't always look where they were going. Abigail watched me do this a few times, and decided that she was going to be just like her Papa . The next thing I knew, she was toddling along behind me, a very serious expression on her face, carrying a twig in her hand, which she threw onto the brush pile. She always helped me with the sticks after that. She sometimes had to throw them two or three times before they made it onto the pile, but she was so adorable when she copied me...

- # -

My relationship with Abigail was going so well, it was tempting to ignore the fact that my marriage and my relationships with Sarah and Rachel were going downhill fast. The older girls ran to Mommy almost every time I asked them to do something, and they usually got a ruling in their favor. So I stopped asking them to do things, which meant Nora wound up doing their chores and resenting everybody for it. I resented her for undermining my authority as a stepfather, and the arguments grew increasingly bitter.

The only thing we agreed on in the summer of 1989 was that another baby would be nice. This was hardly a wise decision in a family on the verge of breakup, but wisdom was rather scarce in that house at the time.

As soon as we knew Nora was pregnant, Sarah began asking Abigail what kind of baby she wanted. It became a running gag, which Sarah would initiate to make her friends laugh:

Sarah: Abigail, do you want a baby brother?
Abigail: No!
Sarah: Do you want a baby sister?
Abigail: No!
Sarah: Do you want a million dollars?
Abigail:No!

Well, she didn't get the million dollars.

- # -

When Nora was expecting Abigail, she had left me when she was two months along. This time, she lasted four months before she ordered me out. I left on an afternoon in October, while Abigail was napping, so she wouldn't see me leave. I was fighting back tears as I carried out the last of my bags. Would I ever have a normal relationship with my Abigail again? How would she take it when she knew I was gone? How could Nora do this to me?

My only thought as I drove away was, "They can't take my memories away."

- # -

She filed for divorce almost as soon as I was gone. I didn't contest it, because I was so desperate for the fighting to end that I would have taken any way out. I certainly didn't think the consequences through. Nora permitted me three visits a week with Abigail, which dwindled to one a week as her pregnancy progressed and our relationship deteriorated.

I went to live with my parents in New Hampshire, driving down to Massachusetts to work (1-1/2 hours each way) and to see Abigail. I returned to my old church in New Hampshire on Sundays, and quickly found that the small children there adored me.

Caring for Abigail had taught me how to approach a little person. Some liked being tossed up in the air and being turned upside-down, while others (like Abigail herself) were terrified of such exertions and preferred tamer rides. I quickly made friends with most of the children in church, including one little guy who was notorious for refusing every adult except his parents. It made me feel better, cut off from my Abigail, to have other kids to play with. But they were a pacifier for me, not a substitute.

I cherished each visit with my daughter. One day, we were walking in the parking lot outside Nora's house. Abigail was hunting for treasures on the ground, and I was watching her and looking out for cars. She apparently wanted her hands free to do something.

"Here, Papa," she said, holding out her hand. "These are my rocks." She gave me two small white stones, no different from the thousands of other pieces of gravel at the edge of the parking lot. But I held onto them for her.

She forgot about them, but I kept them, in case she asked to have them back. I still have those rocks.

Chapter 3: Little Bug And Little Brick - 1990

"I'm going to have twins," she said. I sat down.

She said she had gone in for an ultrasound because her weight gain didn't line up with her due date. She had tried to make small talk with the sonogram technician.

"Everything's okay, right?" she had joked. "I mean, it doesn't have two heads or something?"

"No, everything looks okay," agreed the technician.

"Good, as long as there's only one in there," she joked some more. The technician didn't respond.

"There is only one, right?" she asked, getting nervous.

"Don't you know why you're here?" replied the technician. "I'm not allowed to tell you —"

"TELL ME!" Nora had almost screamed. "It's my body, it's my baby — you tell me!" The technician had called the doctor, and they had reluctantly turned the screen so Nora could see it. The baby on top was definitely a boy; the one behind him was probably a girl.

What would this mean? I felt pretty confident that I knew how to take care of a baby — Abigail had been a good teacher. But two at once? It was hard to envision. And what impact would the divorce have on all this?

She called me again on February 9. "I'm going into labor," she said. I had already agreed to babysit Abigail while Nora was in the hospital, so I grabbed my suitcase (which I'd packed a week ago) and headed south.

The car developed engine troubles after twenty minutes. Screaming and pounding the steering wheel in frustration, I turned around, nursing the miserable hunk of junk all the way back to New Hampshire. I called to explain I'd be late; Nora said she'd try to wait for me, but of course she couldn't make any promises. I borrowed one of my parents' cars and broke the sound barrier all the way to North Attleboro.

Nora left for the hospital with her parents as soon as I arrived. For the next day and a half, I played with Abigail and took care of her. Most of the games revolved around the vinyl play tent I'd given her for Christmas. "Papa makin' tent?" she'd ask with a smile, and I'd tighten any loose joints in the tent frame and invent a game, like peek-a-boo through the door or window.

I finally got my chance to visit the hospital and see my new babies, about two days after they were born. I was told that Nora had carried them to term, but delivered by C-section because they wouldn't get their heads down. Joshua was first out, followed by his twin sister Rebecca a minute later. Both weighed over seven pounds at birth, which is a lot of baby to be carrying around inside. I brought a dozen roses for Nora, but asked Monique to deliver them to her room.

The twins were so big and healthy that they both went straight into the regular nursery instead of a special neonatal-care unit, a first for twins at Women & Infants Hospital. I peered through the nursery window, scanning the rows of clear-plastic bassinets for familiar-looking faces. I couldn't pick them out by appearance, but they had name tags, and the moment I knew which ones were mine, my heart went to mush, just like it had when I first saw Abigail.

I stood guard over the nursery window until closing time. If another new parent or relative paused at the window, I'd ask, "Which one is yours?" They'd point out a tiny person, and I'd smile and nod. Then they'd ask which one was mine, and I'd beam and point. "Those two." My little ones quickly became the stars of the show.

Nora wanted to talk to me at one point. I don't remember what it was about, but we didn't agree on it, and wound up in another argument. As a result, she changed Joshua's middle name from Michael (which we had agreed on) to Stephen. Except for official discussions, I never spoke his middle name again. Maybe that was petty of me. I thought it was petty of her to change it.

I was back the next day, thanks to John's willingness to watch Abigail for a few hours. Rebecca had seemed to be the louder of the two yesterday, but she was pretty placid today, looking toward the window where everyone was staring at them. Josh, on the other hand, was very upset about something. I guess he didn't like the view in the direction he was facing. So, slowly and deliberately, he picked up his head, turned it to face the other way, and laid it down to cry in that direction for a while.

"That's my boy!" I crowed, pumping my fist. My three-day-old son was physically ahead of himself already.

- # -

I first got to hold my babies, one at a time, about a week and a half later. They slept a lot, and they were tiny. Both were bald and blue-eyed, like Abigail. Josh looked much like Abigail, with his button nose and rosebud mouth, while Rebecca bore a startling resemblance to Sarah's baby pictures. I shot half a roll of film that day, taking pictures of sleeping babies.

It wasn't long before the load of caring for five children began to tell on Nora. I wasn't that surprised when she asked if I wanted to move back in. She said it was so we could work on reconciling and eventually remarrying. But her constant complaints about exhaustion made me suspect that she really wanted a live-in babysitter. I agreed anyway, for the sake of my children. I had no real affection left for her, and I didn't have a lot of hope that our relationship could be fixed.

Nora recalled the next few months as one our best times together. I have no memory of it at all, except for taking care of the twins.

- # -

People's reactions to our twins often amazed me. We sometimes dressed them alike, but in pink for Becca and blue for Josh. They didn't look alike at all — Josh's head was big and round, while Becca's was higher. Yet I'd rather not count the people who asked, "Are they identical?"

My usual response was, "He's a boy and she's a girl. Does that answer your question?"

At least one woman persisted, "Yes, but aside from that?"

Then there were the ones (always women) who gushed, "I wish I could have twins!" Our immediate response to that one was, "No, you don't." I would try to explain that twins were like three normally-spaced-apart children, because everything had to be done twice, and they often demanded simultaneous attention.

They rarely wanted to be fed at the same time, which was fortunate for Nora, because she was nursing both of them. The exception was bedtime at night. The older children would all leave the room, and Nora would turn off the light. She would nurse one twin while I diapered and dressed the other, working by the nightlight on the wall. Then we'd trade, and I'd try to change the baby who'd just eaten without getting him/her agitated. When both were done eating, we'd quickly lay them down in their cribs and run for the door before they started protesting.

Because of the demands they put on her time, and because Becca was a poor nurser, Nora rented an electric breast pump and we switched to bottle feeding. She still nursed Josh from time to time, because he was her little boy and she felt especially close to him. Rebecca made our task simpler by starting to sleep through the night at six weeks of age. All the same, Nora was hard-put to satisfy the appetites of two growing babies, and she was flat-out exhausted most of the time. By my math, she was producing almost half a gallon of breast milk a day.

We gave our babies nicknames, as all parents do. Nora came up with the names for Rebecca. As a newborn, she called her "little bug," because she was so much more petite than her brother, but changed to "sweetness and light" at around four months because her disposition was sunnier than Josh's. She finally settled on "Becca-Boo," or just "Boo," which stayed with her.

Nora never tried to come up with a nickname for the boy, which surprised me — she usually wanted to pick all the names. As an infant, I called him "butterball," "little brick," and "the monster baby" because, even though he was half an inch shorter than his sister, he weighed more. He was all muscle from the beginning, and when you picked them up, he felt denser than she did.

He won his most enduring nickname during a visit to the pediatrician's office at around five months. They sat him on an examining table, and he thought the table's sanitary paper covering was the greatest thing since the pacifier. He grabbed it, he kicked it, he pulled it, he ripped it, he threw the pieces everywhere, and all while screaming his favorite word: "Gah!" As a result of this and similar performances, I named him "the goon," and everyone else in the house agreed it was appropriate. Even the pediatrician concurred; during a later visit, she got so flustered at his attack on her office that she exclaimed, "Hold still, you goon!" I wish I could have caught it on videotape.

I also called him "the amazing boy," because he was so amazingly different from his four sisters. Many people want to believe there are no innate differences between boys and girls, and that any differences are the result of their upbringing. Forget that! Nora had brought up two girls, and we had raised the third together, to say nothing of Josh's twin sister; all we knew about was girls, and aside from dressing the boy in blue instead of pink, we treated them identically.

But his approach to life was fundamentally different. He had no interest in his sisters' toys — he liked cars and trucks. His sisters learned to walk around puddles; he stomped in them. If Abigail or Rebecca was unhappy about something, she would burst into tears. Josh's response was to sit in front of the toy box and start flinging toys over his shoulder until we fixed whatever his problem was, or until he ran out of toys. You had to be careful when he sent the toys flying. He had a good arm.

- # -

Rebecca wasn't nearly as snuggly as Joshua. She wasn't as demanding, she wasn't as loud, and she wasn't the only boy in the family. All of these facts combined to make sure that Josh got a disproportionate amount of attention. It worried me that she might fall between the cracks, so to speak. So I made myself a promise, which I told no one about at the time: that I would make up for the attention Becca wasn't getting from the others, even if I had to push Josh aside now and then.

Unlike many promises I'd made, I kept this one. Fortunately, I rarely had to ignore the boy to do so. Becca and I came to have a very close relationship; in some ways, she was closer to me than to Nora. I think this was the result of the extra attention I paid her as a baby.

- # -

Abigail did not show much sibling rivalry toward her little brother and sister. This is not to say she felt none at all.

When Becca was about two months old, I was walking her around the house, getting her relaxed for her nap. Abigail was contentedly playing with her toys in the dining room. But she happened to look up and see what I was doing. In shock and anger, she demanded:

"Papa, put that baby down! That's Mama's!"

Aside from that, she was very good about the sudden increase in the size of her family. She asked a lot of questions about babies, and often watched while we changed them, especially Josh.

One day when Josh was about five months old, he was trying to get comfortable in Nora's lap, but he wasn't quite sure what he wanted. He sat; he lay on his back; he lay on his stomach; he tried to climb up her chest; he sat down again; he lay sideways; he rolled over; and the whole time, he was crying louder and louder. Nora did her best to be patient, but she finally snapped, "Josh, you're getting too big for this! You've tried every position there is — I don't know what to tell you!"

"'Get off!'" suggested Abigail.

- # -

Josh, on the other hand, showed a lot of sibling rivalry. Abigail learned to "share the Daddy," and Becca would always step aside for one of her siblings, but the boy didn't get the message. In particular, he regarded his mama as his personal territory. If he noticed any of his sisters sitting in Nora's lap, he would immediately try to wiggle and wedge himself between them. As he got older, he got more forceful, and if he could shove the trespasser off, so much the better. Even on the rare times when Nora and I tried to snuggle together on the couch, he would determinedly make his way between us. He wasn't as possessive of me, but there were times when I had to slide Becca to one side of my lap and park the boy on the other side, and then hold him there so he couldn't push his sister off my lap and onto the floor.

- # -

I first tried to hold both twins at once when they were two or three months old. I had Josh in my lap, and I parked Becca on the couch next to me, cradling her with one arm. It took a bit of courage on my part; if one of them had a diaper disaster or started crying, I wouldn't be able to respond until I'd put the other one back in his/her bouncy seat.

They both stared at me, him with curiosity, her with a big smile. "I got the babies!" I exclaimed in a high voice, slightly amazed at my own audacity. He stared; she smiled. I remember thinking that this was one of the few benefits of having twins — how many other daddies could do this?

That phrase became one of my own traditions. Even when they were four years old, on the rare occasion when they both wanted to be carried, I would sling one child on each hip and grunt, "I got the babies!"

- # -

Nora tried to relax from the stress of parenthood in any way she could. For a while, she sought distraction in our Nintendo game, but that backfired. She thought she should be able to play as well as Sarah and Rachel , not realizing that they practiced for an hour or more every day. She would get furious at herself each time she lost; she'd cry, she'd call herself names, and she'd finally fling down the controller and storm out of the room, only to try again the next day.

One day, Abigail noticed her connecting the controller. Her big blue eyes full of concern, she walked over and asked, "Mama, are you gonna be mad an' sad an' stupid?"

It was easy to tell what she was thinking that time. At other times, we couldn't guess what was going through that little mind; a few years later, when she could talk well enough to answer, she didn't remember. But she must have been thinking some interesting thoughts, judging by her actions.

I was in the living room one day, keeping an eye on the twins, watching a kids' sing-along video with them, minding my own business. Abigail was in the kitchen with Nora. Suddenly she came racing around the corner, ran up to me, and stopped. She reached out and stuck a blue-dot sticker right on the tip of my nose.

"That's much better," she nodded, and ran out again. As I said, we'll never know.

- # -

Nora's exhaustion began showing up in some outrageous slips of the tongue. She was embarrassed to admit to any of them, and vehemently denied ever saying anything of the kind.

We had divided up the night feeding chores once we shifted to bottle feeding. Becca was sleeping through the entire night by then, so only Josh needed feeding. Nora took the late-night bottle, and I got the early-morning bottle. These bottles of expressed breast milk were kept in the fridge, and had to be heated in a pot of water on the stove to bring them to drinkable temperature without ruining the nutrients in them.

Early one morning, I heard Josh fussing in his crib. I figured I'd feed him before he started crying for real, and maybe he wouldn't wake Nora. But I wasn't as quiet getting out of bed as I thought I was. Nora came about one-fourth awake.

"What are you doing?" she asked dazedly, her eyes barely open.

"Josh is crying; I'm going to feed him," I explained.

"Did you put my breasts in a pan of warm water?" she wanted to know.

"Yes, dear, I'll do that right away," I assured her, and left before she could ask what was so funny.

On another day, Josh was playing in his bouncy-seat, and was getting restless. Nora figured that he needed to suck on his binky for a while — his pacifier always relaxed him. So she called to Sarah, "Could you hand me Joshua's dinky? It's hanging over his swing."

- # -

He never did outgrow his pacifier. We slowly worked him down to where he only needed it for bedtime and to calm him when he got upset or angry, but that's as far as we got. We tried to wean him off of it several times, but he when he wanted it, he wanted it, and he usually knew how to get it.

One afternoon when I was watching the kids, I decided that he was three years old and he didn't need his binky anymore. So when he put it down, I quietly grabbed it and hid it on top of the TV. He must have been watching me, because he immediately began reaching for it, trying all sides of the TV to see if one was lower than the others. When that failed, he didn't get upset. He just started stacking his toys next to the TV so he could climb the pile and get his prize. I gave up and gave it to him; he obviously wasn't ready to give it up yet, and that kind of determination deserved a reward.

- # -

One of my daddy chores was taking the kids for a walk after work. We had a double stroller, and we always put Josh in front and Becca in back; if we did it the other way around, Josh would pound on her head and make her miserable. He wasn't being malicious — he was just a goon. Abigail would walk beside us, and we'd go as far as a mile each night, three or four on weekends when we had more time.

Abigail loved to leave the sidewalk and walk on the stone walls we passed. She almost never stumbled, but I was a worry-wart daddy, and I always told her to be careful. Or maybe it was the other way around; maybe she was careful because I always reminded her. In any case, she got a lot of security from my frequent warnings.

One day, she stepped up onto the wall outside our house, then stopped and got down again. She turned to me and admonished, "Papa, you tell me to be careful!"

Another daddy chore, one I wasn't so fond of, was to be Nora's enforcer. Rachel was eight years old by this time, and she was going through a stage where she would cry for as long as an hour if she didn't get her way. Nora soon got sick of listening to this, and would order her to go sit in the car until the crying stopped. If Rachel refused, it was my job to pick her up and carry her to the car.

Abigail was watching and learning, as usual. Several times that summer, when Rachel was teasing her, she would run to me and order, "Papa, carry Rachel!"

- # -

Bath time became a team sport, because we bathed both twins at once while they were small. Two tub seats were stuck to the floor of the tub, and each baby was fitted into one. Their different personalities were clearly evident: Rebecca would pick up a tub toy as it drifted past her and examine it from every angle, while Josh would grab all the toys he could get his chubby little hands on and hoard them. I tried the papoose game with them, like I did with Abigail, but they didn't enjoy it as much as she did.

They graduated to separate baths after about seven months, which gave them the freedom to bathe in their own way. Becca's tub traditions were pretty sedate. For a while, she liked putting small toys on the edge of the bathtub, where I would fake a sneeze and blow them back into the water. She also smiled and stared when I squeaked a wet finger along the edge of the tub. But her real passion was toys with holes in the bottom, toys that sprinkled water when they were full. She'd fill and empty a sprinkle-cup repeatedly for the length of her bath, holding it up and watching the water coming out. Sometimes I'd pour water into her cup from a pitcher, so she wouldn't have to keep refilling it; sometimes this made her smile, but at other times she'd want to do it herself.

Josh had one thing very much in common with his big sister at bath time — he loved to splash. But while she had outgrown that stage after a few months, he stayed with it all his life. Like everything else he tried, he attacked the idea of splashing with energy and gusto. Kicking with his feet, bringing both hands down together, splashing with all four limbs at once — if there was a way to send the water flying, he tried it. Even when he splashed himself in the eyes, he just blinked a few times, grinned at me, and went back at it. I quickly learned to keep a towel in my hand, and to pull it up in front of myself when he started flailing; otherwise, I'd be as wet as he was when bath time was done. It became a game with him: could he get me wet, or could I get the towel up in time? He would splash like crazy for a few seconds, stop, and smile at me as I cautiously lowered my deflector shields; then he'd start again. Maybe he enjoyed the sight of me ducking for cover.

- # -

Josh was way ahead of his age physically. He crawled at six months, and this was actually a relief. True, we now had to baby-proof the house, and he put our baby-proofing to the test with his usual vigor. But he had not been a happy baby, because he wanted to do things for himself and couldn't. When he learned to roll over, his disposition improved, and once he could crawl, he got really happy. He also started to show how well he was thinking.

One day in his sixth month, Nora and I were watching him crawl around in his room. He was exploring every corner with great diligence, and wound up under his crib. He tried to take the shortest route out, but banged his head on the kick-bar that supported the crib side. Most six-month-olds would have stopped and burst into tears. But not Josh. Without a moment's hesitation, he lowered his head and crawled right under the bar.

Nora's jaw dropped. "Did you see that?" she exclaimed.

"We're in trouble," I nodded.

His crawling also ushered in a habit of his that puzzled us, even as we chuckled at it. When we laid him down in his crib, he would get up on all fours, rest his head against the mattress, and "bulldoze" into the corner of the crib, ramming his head into the bars with a bang. It didn't seem to hurt him — he'd grin all the way. We called him the "bulldozer baby," and we bought extra cushions to pad the end of the crib so he wouldn't bang his head. He dodged them. He experimented with bulldozing across the living-room floor, but one or two rug-burns persuaded him that this version of the game might not be a good idea.

Becca's crib-time habits were more sedate, for the most part. But she had a pink doll with mirrors and rattles in it, which was almost as big as she was. She loved to sleep with it as an infant. It seemed to us that she tried to wrestle with it every night. If so, she usually lost — we'd creep into her room to cover her up, and find the doll on top and Rebecca on the bottom.

- # -

Josh had the nicest head. It was big (a "melon head," Nora called it) and soft to the touch, although it was hard as a rock underneath. He liked to lie next to us while we stroked his head, and it got to be a habit with us. He never outgrew it, either. Even when he was four years old, one of the first things I did on visiting nights was to stroke his head a few times. He'd grin at me until he thought I'd done it long enough, and then pull away. It probably felt good to him.

- # -

One night when Nora was out shopping, I pulled both twins' bouncy-seats together on the floor and dusted off my guitar. Abigail and Rachel both sat and listened as I went through all the children's songs I knew. Josh didn't show any unusual interest.

But Becca was utterly fascinated. She was only a few months old, but her interest in the music was obvious. She got both arms and both legs wiggling, as though she were trying to boogie to the beat. That was the first time we saw her love of music. It was also one of my favorite memories of her as a baby.

- # -

Once they began eating solid food, the fun really began. Nora fed them breakfast and lunch; I handled dinner and some of the week-end meals. It was a real test of reflexes.

To feed these twins, we sat them as close to each other as we could. Sometimes this meant Josh could reach across and steal a toy off Becca's tray, but that couldn't be helped. We'd spoon one bite into Josh, and then, as quickly as possible, get another spoonful into Becca. When they were both hungry, it became a race to see how fast we could go without slopping strained carrots all over the landscape, because if we went too slow, one of them would either throw a fit or refuse to eat.

When they graduated from bouncy-seats to high chairs, they demanded to be entertained while they ate. We had to provide a constant supply of toys on their trays; when they threw one over the side, another had to take its place. It couldn't be the same toy, either. Toys that moved or made noise were the best; in a pinch, I'd move an inanimate toy around with my left hand while I got the next bite ready with my right. Unfamiliar objects, like a rubber spatula or my key chain, might hold their interest for a few bites. Josh had lots of fun with a metal bowl and a spoon, but he deafened the rest of us with his banging, so we had to try something else.

One day, they rejected everything I could put on their trays. In desperation, I grabbed two bungee cords intended to connect small children to their parents in public. I hung them from the suspended ceiling and affixed a rattle to the free end of each. That did the trick for that meal, and for several more afterward. They happily pulled and batted at those rattles while I slipped their food into them. Nora said it looked stupid, and it probably did, but hey, it worked!

Becca was usually as finicky as her brother, but she never refused a bite of strained bananas. I'd sing, "ba-naaa-na!", and she'd smile and open wide. I was sometimes tempted to trick her into eating other things, to sing, "ba-naaa-na!", and then slip her a bite of something she didn't like so well.

But I never did it. I wanted her to know beyond doubt, even as a baby, that Daddy meant what Daddy said. To me, that seemed more important than a few bites of strained squash.

- # -

We tried taking all five kids to my parents' summer cottage on Lake Winnepesaukee, NH, in August. The twins spent a lot of time in their walkers for their own protection — that cottage would have been impossible to make baby-proof. Josh delighted in how easily his walker glided across the hardwood floors, and in how many things he could bang into at high speed. My mother was soon calling him "Crash," to Nora's displeasure. He also enjoyed chasing my mother's yellow-Labrador mix around the house. Becca was more sedate, as we could have predicted; she was happy just to pat the doggie. The doggie was happier with that, too.

As for Abigail, never underestimate how well a small child understands what's going on. They see and hear everything, and they often draw surprising (and correct) conclusions.

For example, Abigail had visited my parents' year-round house in southern New Hampshire only once or twice. But that was enough to convince her that my father was a first-class packrat. Almost every room in the house had a pile of something in one corner, and the basement and garage were so full of tools, lumber, and clutter, they were almost uninhabitable.

I had taken Abigail to climb the Big Rock near the cottage, just as I had done when I was a child. (It seemed a lot bigger then.) On the way back, she wanted to see what was in our garage. So I opened the door and held her up so she could clearly see what was inside: two or three refrigerators, old automobile tires, assorted lumber, tools in various stages of rust and decay... I think there was a fourteen-foot power boat in there somewhere, but it was hard to tell.

Abigail just stared. "What a mess, huh?" I asked.

She solemnly replied, "This must be for Grandpa."

- # -

On the same vacation, she found my mother's little flower garden. She asked if she could pick some flowers, and Grandma helped her select which ones were good to pick. They soon had a vase filled with assorted flowers.

"What kind of flower is this, Daddy?" she asked, pointing at something that looked vaguely like a chrysanthemum.

"Is it a mum?" I asked, glancing at Nora.

"I don't think so," she replied.

Abigail beamed and cried, "Then it must be a papa!"

Chapter 4: Three Little Happy People - 1991

• Sep 3, 1990: Joshua's first tooth. The next two followed within a week.
• Oct 31: Rebecca began calling for "mama."
• Nov 3: Rebecca's first tooth.
• Jan 1, 1991: Josh walked three feet before falling; Rebecca took her first step; Joshua got very vocal.
• Jan 3: Joshua walked halfway across the living room.
• Jan 5: Rebecca took 2 steps to Mama.
• Feb 2: Rebecca walked halfway across the dining room.
• Mar 8: Josh climbed all the way upstairs. (He wasn't supposed to; somebody left the hall door open. And he did it with his bottle in one hand.)
• Mar 29: Josh drank from a sippy-cup for the first time.
• May 28: Becca led me around by one finger, just like Abigail used to.
• Jun 1: Becca said, "banana."

It seemed clear that Josh was surging ahead physically, while Becca's triumphs were more in the thinking department. Typically, she would invent a new game to play with me, and he'd jump on the bandwagon and copy her.

The spin game, which Abigail always loved, was one of those Becca-discoveries that Josh also liked. Each one would grab a finger and run, almost always counterclockwise. I tried to make sure Josh held my right hand and Becca my left, because he ran faster than she did and he'd get behind me if he was on my left. He invented his own variation on the game, though — he'd run as fast as he could, then let go and tumble head over heels. Then he'd catch up with "his" finger (I'd still be spinning with Becca) and do it again. Becca tried copying him, but she wasn't a tumbler. She'd just fall to her hands and knees before getting up. She gave up on falling after a couple of weeks, long before he did.

Poor Abigail wanted to join in the game, but I was out of hands. She tried hanging onto my shirt, and she tried holding one of the twins' hands, but the only thing that worked was running just in front of Josh so he could chase her. He loved chasing his sister.

He also loved tackling her, and anyone else he thought he could bring down. He went through a long stage of clinging to Abigail's ankle, grinning, and expecting her to drag him around the room with her. If she lay on the floor, he'd sit on her. If she sat on the floor, he'd drape himself over her shoulder from behind and slide down her as though she were a playground slide, until she cried, "Daddy, help!" He tried similar things with Becca, Nora and me. We called it "gooning," and it kept us on our toes. Nora would holler, "Goon alert!" and I'd come running to rescue whichever sister he was persecuting, or sometimes just to rescue him from himself. We were especially vigilant when he flashed his "goony grin," a big toothy smile that usually meant he had an idea for escaping his bounds or dismantling something. He wasn't being malicious — there wasn't a cruel bone in his body. He was just a goon, and he was good at it.

He and Rebecca were watching a video one day. He was on one side of the room, she was on the other. They were oblivious to each other, as usual. Neither was bothering the other. But, apparently, Josh felt a sudden wild urge to goon somebody. He ran across the room, tackled Becca to the floor, then returned to his place and went back to watching the video. If Becca had been talking yet, I'm sure she would have said something like, "Wha'd I do? Wha'd I do?"

Nora, in particular, had to be careful when she stretched out on the couch. That was the boy's cue to climb up on top of the couch and jump on her, then climb back and do it again. If she sat up, he'd try to sit on her head. She still wasn't getting much rest.

As for me, I took a risk any time I lay down on the floor. Abigail had played "Hop on Pop;" Josh did the chest dance. He'd clamber up onto my rib cage, grin at me, and begin running in place. Nothing I could say would get him to stop, and if I didn't grab him and put him down on the floor, he'd keep going until he lost his balance and fell off.

If I was kneeling or sitting on the floor, he would either climb onto my shoulders for a piggyback ride, or he played the judo game. In this game, he ran up behind me and leaned over my left shoulder. I grabbed him and carefully flipped him over my shoulder, head over heels, so that he turned a full somersault before I put him down. He usually hit the ground running and circled around behind me for another flip. Becca tried to copy him, but she couldn't get the knack and always lost her balance when I put her down, falling flat on her dignity.

If he felt goony, but no people were in convenient positions, he'd practice his new indoor sport: rocking-chair surfing. He would stand in a rocking chair, stretch out his arms, and start rocking with his legs. We sometimes worried that he would tip the chair over, but that particular mishap never occurred. He once hit his twin sister in the head with the back of the chair and sent her sprawling, though.

He also liked the trusting game, which he discovered without Rebecca's help. He usually waited until I was looking at him before he fell forward. He didn't always wait until I was close enough to catch him, though, and I made at least one diving catch that any major-league baseball player would have been proud of. Becca tried the trusting game once or twice, but it wasn't her style.

One game both twins enjoyed was "Look how cute I am." To play this game, one of them would stand next to a couch and flop his/her head down on it, then grin and wait until Nora or I said, "Awww!" Then he/she would do it again.

Becca modified this slightly in the next few months. She would slowly reach for something she knew she wasn't supposed to touch, and stop when her hand was an inch or so away from whatever it was. She'd break out in a big smile, and then wait until one of us noticed her. Then she'd grab it if we didn't say, "No, Becca!" I don't think she wanted to grab the whatever-it-was; she just loved the attention.

Another attention-getter of hers was her squeal. I cannot describe the noise she would make, or copy it, for that matter. But to hear this sound coming from such a dainty little girl would make anyone laugh. Once she got a reaction from us, of course she'd do it again. But we couldn't induce her to do it; she squealed only when she felt like it.

She had one game that Josh never copied, and that was the Daddy's-face game. She never learned to say the names of the parts of the body, but she loved to point at them while we said their names. She especially liked to sit in my lap and touch the parts of my face, from bottom to top, as I named them: "Beard, moustache, nose, glasses, forehead, NO HA-AIR!"

- # -

Nora's verbal slips continued unabated, to Sarah and Rachel's delight. She once asked Sarah to "take their diapers out of the fridge so the babies will have something to drink."

On another occasion, when talking about what I had fed the kids while she was out, I mentioned peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches.

"Did you use the tablecloth bread?" she asked anxiously. When she asked why I was looking at her that way, I told her what she'd said. She got embarrassed and left the room; I never did find out what she really meant.

After one particularly harrowing day with five kids at home, Nora tried to warn Abigail about her approaching bedtime. "Abigail, it's time for Daddy to put Mike to work... no, I meant it's time for Mike to put Daddy to bed."

"Abigail, it's bedtime," I finished for her. Nora hid her face in her hands and moaned, "Don't make fun of me — I'm tired!"

Her number-one prize-winner came at supper one night. She was on a diet, and we all knew it, because we'd had to hide our sweets so she wouldn't be tempted. She served pasta that night. She measured out her portion on her little scale, devoured it, then got up and helped herself to seconds.

Neither Sarah, Rachel, nor I wanted to say anything, but we were all watching her. She got self-conscious and exclaimed, "I know I'm having sex, but I'm still hungry!"

- # -

I was working long hours to support this bunch, and I could have used some rest, too. But Abigail often had other ideas. One afternoon, I staggered in the door after an eleven-hour day and collapsed sideways in an overstuffed chair; my head was on one arm of the chair, my legs were draped over the other. I closed my eyes and began to relax. But some parental sixth sense warned me to tighten up; half a second later, forty-five pounds of Abigail leaped onto my abdomen, knees first.

As I carefully drew a breath to see if anything was broken, she smiled sweetly and said, "Hi, Daddy! I wake you up!"

When I got good and tired, I sometimes tried to wiggle out of playing with her, even when she came and asked me to. But when she smiled and tried to sweet-talk me, I usually gave in. How could I say no when she said things like, "C'mon, it'll be fun!" or, "It's okay, I'll be your friend!"

- # -

Josh was a strong little boy. When he played the spin game with me, I had to be careful — his grip could hurt my finger if he grabbed me the wrong way.

Abigail climbed into her toy shopping cart one day. She could barely fit, and I was amazed that her weight didn't break the cart. I was even more amazed when Josh grabbed the handle of the cart and pushed his big sister across the room, then tried to drag her back.

- # -

I first took Abigail to work on a Friday night in the summer of 1991. All seven of us had been out on some kind of errand that evening, and we stopped at my office so I could start a lengthy computer program running over the weekend.

The twins were snug in their portable bouncy-seats, so they caused no problems. Sarah and Rachel were singing and running in the halls; I was thankful no one else was working late. But Abigail was intrigued by my office, my swivel chair, my computer, everything.

Most of the lights were off in the building at that hour. She apparently thought that was the normal state of things, and she was concerned that I had to work in darkness. She made references to "Daddy's dark work" for at least a year.

She knew I went somewhere every morning and came back at night, and she'd seen people working on Sesame Street, but that visit tied the loose ends together for her. Now my work was part of her universe, and fair game for her imagination.

I was sitting on the couch one day, watching the twins, when Abigail skipped into the room. She plopped down next to me and held up her bare foot.

"Daddy, lookit my foot!" she exclaimed.

"What do you want me to do with your foot?" I countered.

"I want you to take it to work with you."

She still liked her cookie in a bag for breakfast, but one morning, she woke up too late to do anything but wave goodbye to me. So she stood in the open door and called, "Bye, Daddy! You go' work! You work on compooter! You talk onna phone! Then you come home!" So that's what I did.

- # -

She was now old enough, and her attention span was long enough, that I started reading her a story from her children's Bible every night. She listened attentively, and it became part of our bedtime ritual: we'd lie on my bed while I read the Bible story, she'd go to the bathroom and brush her teeth, then she'd return to my room. Usually, I'd pray with her, kiss her, and carry her into her room to tuck her in. I carried her like a baby, and she would reach out to open the door to her room. Sometimes she'd want to put herself to bed without help, but those were the exceptions.

One night's story was about the Tabernacle, the tent of worship that the Israelites carried while they wandered in the wilderness. Abigail's Bible had a good illustration, so I pointed at it and explained, "Now, this is called the Tabernacle."

She pointed at part of it and copied my tone: "And this is called the door." That lesson was cancelled because I couldn't stop laughing.

- # -

I took to wearing a light-blue baseball cap during my walks with the kids that summer, mostly to protect my head from sunburn. The twins soon learned what it meant when I put on that hat. They'd run for the door, jumping up and down with excitement — Pavlov would have been proud. If someone was throwing a fit, a glimpse of the blue hat would usually calm them down. I called it "the walking hat," and I didn't try to leave home without it. Even in the winter, I wore that hat under the hood of my jacket on the days when the weather was clear enough to take the little ones out for some fresh air.

- # -

Nora came up with one more good slip of the tongue at Christmas. The mess and commotion had her a little flustered, and she thought it would help if some of the debris could be put away. So she instructed Sarah and Rachel to "put all the twins' toys in the toy box, and put Abigail's toys in the dumpster."

She helped the girls make Christmas presents for me out of dough. Rachel made a paper-clip cup, painted neon-pink. Sarah helped Abigail make me a paperweight. It was just a flowery shape cut out with a cookie-cutter and painted blue, with the word "DAD" in orange. I took them to my office. They're still there. They have both cracked badly as they dried out, but Rachel's cup still holds paper-clips, and Abigail's paperweight still says, "DAD."

Chapter 5: The Lost Year - 1992

I do recall one family shopping trip in the springtime. We were heading home, and Abigail wanted to stop and get lunch at McDonald's. Nora told her she didn't have any money to eat out.

"Daddy?" she asked me expectantly.

"No, I don't have any money, either," I shrugged.

She got flustered and exclaimed, "Well, somebody has to have money!"

- # -

She went through a defiant stage in the summer. We didn't sweat it. It wasn't severe, and it didn't last long. Besides, it was so unlike her, even unnatural for her, that her attempts to rebel seemed comical at times.

It was getting late one night, and Abigail was showing no awareness that bedtime was approaching, in spite of several warnings. I finally switched off the TV and said, "I think I'll put you to bed now, Abigail."

"I think you won't," she retorted.

- # -

Becca and I began a new tradition, one that occurred after bedtime. She and Abigail had been moved into the same room so her restless brother wouldn't keep her awake. Becca went to bed first, and we always hoped she'd be asleep by the time Abigail's bedtime rolled around, half an hour later. It rarely happened that way. I'd enter the room with Abigail in my arms, and Becca would stand up in her crib, her eyes sparkling, so happy to see me... It broke my heart to ignore her and walk out. But all the experts, including Nora, said that if I talked to her or paid attention to her, it would get her excited and keep her from falling asleep.

Phooey! How could I reject my littlest girl when she smiled at me like that? I began picking her up and walking her around the room for a few minutes after I tucked Abigail in. She loved the extra attention, and you can't convince me it had any impact on her sleep schedule. I loved it, too. Becca wasn't a very affectionate child at this time, and if she wanted to snuggle her head on my shoulder for a few minutes, that was just fine with me.

- # -

The twins still weren't talking. They certainly understood some of what we said to them, and they were occasionally learning a word here and there, but it wasn't normal development. We were reassured by friends that "twins always learn more slowly than single children," and "boys take longer than girls." We decided not to panic unless they turned three years old and still didn't talk.

Josh had even managed to learn his big sister's name — "Agga-nay," which was pretty close to "Abigail." I was so proud of him! But somewhere during the year, both of them stopped developing mentally. Josh froze at a one-year-old level, and Becca at about two years.

- # -

Rebecca did reach her "end-of-toddlerhood" milestone, like Abigail did with the popcorn bowl. With Becca, it was her high chair. We learned to park their high chairs in front of the TV set at suppertime, and play their favorite videos while they ate. It was easier than endlessly supplying them with toys during supper, and they would keep eating as long as they were entertained.

Becca watched me drag Joshua's high chair through the dining room to the living room one night, then darted into the kitchen. I heard a scraping noise and ran to see what she was up to. She was trying to drag her own high chair to the living room! I scooped her up in my arms, hugged her and kissed her, and praised her for being such a smart girl. I don't know if she connected this with what she'd just done, but she ate up the attention.

- # -

We took the kids to Lake Winnipesaukee once more that summer. The twins were still sleeping in cribs, so my father found an old crib for Josh and my mother rented a porta-crib for Becca. The latter was a mixed success. We honestly thought she wouldn't try to climb out of it.

But one afternoon during their nap time, their nursery monitor went silent. No static, nothing. So Nora went upstairs to see what had gone wrong. What she found was Becca ambling down the hall, a huge grin on her face and the monitor in her hands. She handed it to her Mommy, very pleased with herself. Nora put her back in the porta-crib, but we couldn't relax and assume she was safe anymore, which cast an unexpected damper on our vacation. The older girls enjoyed tying ropes to their inner tubes and letting me pull them behind the rowboat, but other than that, I don't remember much about that vacation trip.

- # -

In September of 1992, after one too many fights, Nora informed me that I had to find someplace else to live. Once again, I had to leave Abigail behind, and my twins as well. When we came back together in 1990, Nora had promised Abigail that Daddy would never leave again. How many more promises to these kids were we going to break?

In October, a month after I left, Nora became engaged to Ken Fontaine, someone she apparently knew from years ago. They married in November. I hadn't even had time to get used to the fact that I was really divorced now. I think the combined shocks took their toll on my memories of what happened that year.

Nora had asked for a flat rate for child support, instead of the customary percentage. All she wanted, she said, was to be able to stay in the house so the kids could have a decent place to live and grow up. I thought that was all right, especially because I had moved so frequently during my own childhood, and had hated it. Besides, whenever I got a pay raise, the increase would be mine, and my standard of living would slowly improve over the years. But her flat rate was over half of my take-home pay.

I moved into a rooming house, paying $60 a week for rent. I got one room, with a common kitchen and bathroom shared among three men; having the kids for sleep-overs was impossible. Nora granted me five visits a week, though — one night out with each of the twins, two with Abigail, and a visit with all of them at Nora's house.

Those in-house visits were horribly stressful to me at first. After all, this had been my house, my wife, my family, and now this Ken character had walked in off the street and taken my place! But I wanted to spend time with my children as a family, in familiar surroundings, as well as one on one.

To be fair, Ken never tried to usurp my place in my children's hearts. He was a good stepfather, far better than I had been. (When Abigail approached me one day and exclaimed, "Aren't I lucky to have two daddies?" it turned out that Rachel had put her up to it.) And it speaks well of him that he allowed me, his wife's former husband, into his home every week to play with the little ones. Under different circumstances, I probably would have liked him. Abigail and Becca certainly did.

Josh didn't like him, not one little bit. He wouldn't let Ken change him, dress him, or feed him, and forget trying to play with him. It wasn't anything Ken had done; it was just a personality clash. To my knowledge, Ken was the only person Josh ever tried to hurt on purpose. It got so bad that Nora would call me or Monique if someone had to babysit when the boy was home, rather than forcing Ken into a confrontation no one could win.

The situation was somewhat similar to my clashes with Sarah and Rachel. Maybe Nora had learned something from my mistakes, and didn't try to force husband #3 into a no-win situation like she did with #2.

- # -

For Christmas, Abigail gave me a screwdriver set she'd bought for a dollar. They were made of soft steel, and I knew they'd never hold up under any heavy use. But I wanted to use them, because it would make her happy.

My job provided the answer. In addition to computer programming, I was also saddled with all the computer maintenance for our department. My Abigail-tools, as I called them, became my tool kit at work. This was something she could understand, because I was always fixing broken things when I lived with her, and to a lesser extent afterward.

I still have my Abigail-tools, and I still take them out regularly to unscrew various cables and connectors. I think of her whenever I use them.

Chapter 6: The Lean Year - 1993

I slowly adapted to my new condition as a divorced man. Finances were the hard part. I didn't begrudge my children a penny, but that didn't leave much for me. For example, my grocery budget worked out to $15 a week. There was just nothing left for entertainment or other expenses. Nora wasn't exactly living high off the hog, either, so I couldn't blame her for taking all my money. I simply hadn't done the math before I agreed to the support arrangements.

When Nora asked if I could feed the twins during my visits with them, I agreed — if she would chip in on the cost. I figured I was giving up more than half my paycheck to support my kids; shouldn't that include their meals? She didn't see it that way, but she wound up sending $2 and a juice cup out with each twin when I picked them up. I added $1 of my own, and that just covered the price of six chicken nuggets and a small order of fries, a reasonably large supper for a three-year-old, if not perfectly nutritious. I paid for Abigail's meals myself, in part because, on Friday nights, I would buy a burger and eat with her. It was worth it to me; I didn't want to sit there, staring at her while she ate. I wanted to do things with her.

- # -

The first time I took the boy to the mall, he didn't quite know what he wanted to do. We spent the first fifteen minutes riding up and down the escalators — as soon as we got to the top, he'd drag me around to go down again. The mall employees who were handing out flyers at the foot of each escalator were soon smiling and waving to us as we passed them again, and again, and again.

Then he spotted the food court. Evidently, he thought he would find his mother there, and he began searching for her. He began running after a few minutes, dragging me along by one finger, and I started having trouble keeping up with him. Also, he was starting to get upset. I finally called a halt and tried to lead him someplace else. He didn't want to go, so I picked him up and carried him on my hip. He burst into tears.

"Ah-gn, gah-gn!" he cried, reaching back over my shoulder. Was he calling for his mother? He just couldn't communicate! I had no idea what he meant, so I just tried to soothe him. He wanted no part of being soothed; he bunched his fingertips together and hit me.

"Oh, no, Josh!" I exclaimed, trying to convey dismay rather than discipline. He gave me a long look — he must have been weighing his chances of winning this confrontation — and unbunched his fingers. I got him calmed a bit and took him home.

He never tried to hit me again. But I'll hear that anguished "Ah-gn, gah-gn" as long as I live.

- # -

Josh was visibly upset when I returned him from some of these early visits. Nora was concerned that he might not be enjoying his nights out with me, that he might prefer to stay in a familiar setting. I think she also worried that I was mistreating him somehow. He settled those questions himself one day.

I pulled into the driveway to pick him up. Nora usually sent him out with Ken, but today, she brought him out herself. The moment he saw my car, he broke out in a huge smile and went into a little dance, running in place on the front steps. Then he grabbed Nora's finger and took off at full speed — he practically dragged her across the parking lot to the car. She never again worried about how my kids felt about their visits with me.

- # -

For her birthday, Abigail wanted a toy called an Awesome Toss'em. It was a plump, neon-yellow stuffed kitty, with a sound box inside that meowed whenever the toy was moved. I bought it for her, and she was happy. Unfortunately, the first time we played catch with it, she got bonked in the nose with the sound box, and she lost enthusiasm for her new toy.

But Becca loved it. I mean that literally — she took that kitty into her heart. It went everywhere with her: meals, playtime, bed, rides in the car, everywhere. She patted it every five or ten seconds to make it go "meow, meow, meow," and she'd smile. The sound drove Nora crazy, to the point where she removed the sound box for a few weeks. I have never seen a child love a toy the way Rebecca loved that kitty. Abigail said she could keep it, which I thought was very generous of her. As for me, I was a little sad that Abigail didn't like her birthday present, but Rebecca's smiles more than made up for it.

The toy got so dirty, from being constantly used and loved, that even laundering it didn't help. Nora bought her a new one later that year. If Becca knew the difference, she didn't show it. It remained her absolute favorite toy.

- # -

We began to get concerned about the twins' not learning to talk. Josh, in particular, was stuck in a baby-talking rut.

He had left his "Gah!" behind, aside from occasionally screaming, "Ga, ga, gah!" at passing cars. Now, his word was "Ah-gn gah-gn." This could have been an attempt to say "goony guy," which is what we were calling him. Or maybe it was just baby talk. Sometimes he'd get excited and cut loose with a long "Ah-gn gah-gn gah-gn gah-gn gah-gn..." that would last until he ran out of breath, or until he'd said whatever was on his mind. Regardless, he found a number of uses for the word.

When playing with trains on the floor, Abigail would make a "chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, choo choo" sound. Josh also liked playing with trains, and he copied his big sister as best he could. It came out, "Ah-gn gah-gn, ah-gn gah-gn, ee-ee."

A much better use of the word, in my opinion, was in the only song he ever learned to sing. It was from one of his sing-along videos, and the words to the chorus went like this:

"Oops! Oops! Oops! I'm always spilling,
"Oops! Oops! Oops! I'm always dropping,
"Oops! Oops! Oops! Do I have to pick it up?
"I don't WANNA pick it up!"

"Vvts, vvts, vvts, n-gah-gn,
"Vvts, vvts, vvts, n-gah-gn,
"Vvts, vvts, vvts, ah-gn gah-gn,
"yah-yah-YAH-yah-yah-yah!"

- # -

My phone rang at work one afternoon. I picked it up and said, "Hello."

Silence.

"Hello?"

"GAH GAH GAH N-GAH!"

"Oh, hi, Josh! How are you?"

<CLICK>

The next time I saw Nora, I asked if she had called me and put him on the phone to talk to me. She had no idea what I was talking about. Our best guess was that I was the last person anyone had called from that phone, and he'd been playing with the receiver and hit the "redial" button by accident. We'll never know for sure how he called me up.

- # -

His gooning reached new heights when he decided to emulate Samson and push over the decorative wooden columns in the living-room entryway. He didn't succeed, of course, but it was quite a sight to watch him pushing on the pillars with all his might and screaming at them. He tried the same stunt outdoors, on trees two feet thick. He couldn't push them over, either. But he apparently thought he could, and it was hysterical to watch.

He tried it one day when I had Nora's camcorder pointed at him. Every parent knows that children will never do something cute when the film is rolling. But Josh forgot that rule, and he performed brilliantly. That video of him screaming at the tree was one of my absolute favorites.

- # -

Becca continued to show an interest in music, but it had to be on her terms. Sometimes she'd smile when I sang her a song, and sometimes she'd scream and try to stop me. I confess to trying different songs, experimenting with what upset her and what didn't, until I finally figured out what her rule was.

If she was accustomed to hearing a song sung by children or women, I wasn't allowed to sing that song. If it was a "man's song" in her mind, that was okay for me to sing. It helped to understand her pattern; now I could indulge her love of music (and mine) without causing any more tantrums.

I would sometimes bring my guitar over during visits. I'd sing songs from the kids' sing-along videos, and Abigail would request a church song or two that she knew. Becca would watch and listen and smile, but she kept her distance, in case I sang a song she didn't want me to sing.

Josh's approach to my guitar was, well, unique. He'd stand next to me, rest his head against the body of the guitar, and walk underneath it, sliding his head along its curves. I'd laugh and ask what he was doing, and he'd grin and do it again. After a few of those, he'd start playing the guitar as if it were a drum. Becca would join him, but she wanted to pick at the strings. I'd form chords with my left hand so she'd make a pretty sound — if it could be heard over the boy's banging.

- # -

She saw me operating my calculator-watch one evening, and decided that that was the thing to do. Playing with my watch became one of her rituals. She would guide me to a place to sit if I wasn't sitting already, curl up in my lap, and grab my wrist. Regardless of whatever handicap she might have, she learned to operate the tiny buttons to turn on calculator mode and clear the display. Then she'd sit for half an hour or more, pushing buttons to fill up the display, then clearing it and starting over. The number 7 seemed to be her favorite.

She sometimes bent my wrist at painful angles, but I tried to accommodate her. It was so neat that she had learned how to make something work, just by observing her Daddy. And I was sure she didn't play this game with anybody else on the planet.

- # -

Becca was learning to count at this time. I first realized it when I saw her climbing up and down off a child's wooden rocking chair. With each step, she would say, "Un, hoo, fwee, fo'." I watched, wondering what she was doing. Then it hit me — she was imitating her mommy's step-aerobic exercise videos! She looked puzzled for a moment when I started laughing, then returned to her exercises.

Somewhere around this time, she learned her first complete sentence. It was the sentence she heard most often around the house, primarily because of her brother:

"Stop it!"

- # -

Josh wasn't talking, but there were plenty of signs that there was nothing wrong with his thinking gear. It was just a problem with communicating.

Becca was ignoring her supper one night. It was a waffle, cut up in pieces and left on the coffee table in the living room. She was playing the run-to-Daddy-and-get-picked-up game, and I wanted her to grab a bite between runs. She just wanted to play.

I walked over to her plate, pointed at it, and called, "Becca, take a bite!" Josh was in the dining room; he could not possibly have seen what I did. But he came barreling into the living room, stopped next to her plate, and pointed at it, using the exact same gesture I had just used. Then he looked up at me, mugging for approval. If my falling on the floor laughing was approval, he got it.

- # -

Nora and I began taking the twins to various specialists, trying to find out what the problem was. The doctors were extremely reluctant to draw any kind of a conclusion. Josh's first diagnosis boiled down to, "he's aggressive and he's a boy." No kidding?

They thought he might have a problem with his hearing, brought on by the many ear infections he had as a baby. But we knew there was nothing wrong with his ears. He could hear the crinkle of a candy-bar wrapper from two rooms away!

Nora began doing a lot of homework, and sharing the results with me. She became increasingly convinced that Josh, and possibly Becca, suffered from autism, a birth defect that affects the way the brain processes information from the senses. I didn't like the thought that my children might be mentally handicapped, but what else could it be? Everything Nora read pointed toward autism.

Because she made her diagnosis long before the doctors could make up their minds, we got an early start on treating them as though they were autistic. Nora made picture boards — placards with Polaroid photos of different aspects of their day, like food, juice cups, the TV, and their beds. The idea was that, if Josh or Becca wanted something and didn't know how to ask, he or she could point at the appropriate picture. She arranged them chronologically, from the start of their day to the end. At least one doctor was amazed and impressed by that idea. To Nora, it was just common sense.

She also began learning sign language, in case Josh would respond to that form of communication. I learned a few of the most frequently-used signs, like "silly" and "stop it." He never got the idea; I don't think he ever used his picture board, either. Becca would point to the picture of her bed when she was ready to go night-night, and she learned to point at different pictures and name them, but when she wanted something, she would either try to say the word, or take one of us by the hand and lead us to what she wanted.

- # -

I started to get really upset about one aspect of the situation: if Abigail wanted some small something, I never had enough money to buy it for her. Whether it was a Happy Meal or a visit to a small travelling carnival, it seemed that I always had to deny her. It didn't help that, now and then, Nora and Ken could get her those things. As summer approached, I determined that I would have enough money to take her to the New England Fair, even if it meant eating spaghetti for a month.

That's when I discovered that money could be made by collecting and cashing in cans and bottles for deposit. I took to prowling the streets on weekends, hunting for discarded cans, and redeeming them in $5 increments. When the big day came, I had enough to give my daughter a decent night out.

She preferred tame rides for the most part, although she did ride one kiddie roller-coaster. Trains and merry-go-rounds were more her speed. We went into a fun house together, and she laughed out loud at the distorting mirrors and what they did to us. At the end, I tried to win a stuffed dinosaur for her by throwing darts at balloons. I failed, and it would be hard to say which of us was more disappointed.

Two weeks later, I found a similar dinosaur at a friend's yard sale and bought it for her. That red Dimetrodon with the little smile became one of her favorite stuffed toys. She slept with it every night for months, and it was still in her bed two years later. Again, I had picked a toy that made a difference. It made me feel like I was doing something right.

- # -

When we ate together at McDonald's, I made a point of not eating the long French fries, because she liked the long ones. She knew I was picking out the small ones, and I think it concerned her that I wasn't getting any of the "good" fries.

She picked up a long one and offered it to me one day. "Oh, no, Abigail, you eat the long ones, and I'll eat the short ones," I protested.

"No, you'll eat what I give you," she retorted.

- # -

At the start of one visit, she offered me a twist of aluminum foil, about seven inches long. "Here, Daddy — this is for you," she announced.

"Thank you, Abigail," I said hesitantly, not wanting to hurt her feelings. "What is it?"

"It's an aluminum-foil pickle," she replied very seriously. "And, Daddy, this is much better than a real pickle, because if you ever forget what a pickle looks like, you can look at this one, and then you'll remember."

I thanked her and put it in my briefcase so it wouldn't get lost. It wouldn't fit in the folder in which I kept the pictures she gave me, so it wound up on my desktop in my room. Every now and then, I would pick it up, look at it, and chuckle.

- # -

Although she was getting older, she still had some strong opinions of how things ought to be done. She once corrected my penmanship, insisting that I was starting my letter "b" from the wrong end of the letter.

I surprised her one Sunday afternoon by taking her to the mall to see a live-action Disney show, with characters dressed like Roger Rabbit, Mickey Mouse, and Minnie Mouse (her favorite). She sat on my shoulders so she could see over the crowd, and she was overjoyed to see all these beloved characters dancing and singing on the stage. But after Roger Rabbit had failed twice to pull a rabbit out of a hat, he pulled himself out of a giant hat. Everyone else clapped and cheered for him. Abigail yelled, "Cheating!"

- # -

There was still no sign of rivalry or resentment against her little brother or sister. But she had enjoyed being Daddy's queen-bee for three years, and that wasn't something she'd surrender easily.

One night, I wound up putting Abigail and Rebecca to bed at the same time. Abigail sat on her bed, watching me walk her sister around the room before laying her down. When I came to tuck her in, she held her arms up instead.

"Will you walk me, Daddy?" she asked, her big blue eyes wide and hopeful.

She weighed over fifty pounds, and her feet dangled down to my knees when I held her. But I picked her up and walked with her. She laid her head on my shoulder, sighed, and relaxed. All was well with her world.

- # -

One thing was certain about Abigail: she had no shortage of self-confidence. I think that was because she felt so secure in her mommy's and daddy's love, and because we tried to encourage her in everything.

While baby-sitting for Nora one Saturday, I took all three kids for a stroll. It was a typical walk for us: Abigail was walking on walls and asking questions about everything she saw, while Josh and Becca just sat in their stroller and watched the scenery go by.

We passed one house that had two bright red rocks in the front yard. "Abigail," I asked, "how do you think those rocks got red?"

"Somebody painted them," she answered matter-of-factly.

"How'd you know that?" I inquired.

"Mommy told me," was the response, which satisfied me. But on the way back, we passed the same rocks, and she altered her answer a little bit.

"I changed my mind — Mommy didn't tell me that. I'm just smart about everything."

- # -

Abigail proved that she was her mother's daughter in a number of ways. To my mind, the proof was in her own slips of the tongue.

Her best one occurred one cool evening when she hadn't brought any gloves with her. On the way out of the mall, she stuck her hands in her pockets and complained, "My horns are cold!"

- # -

In the autumn, the learning-toy store at the local mall put a Brio wooden push-train set on display for shoppers to play with. All three of my children were drawn to it like magnets, and I knew what their big Christmas present would have to be. All summer and fall, and into the winter, my can-and-bottle fund grew until I had almost two hundred dollars set aside. My parents contributed to the project, and I was able to buy most of the tracks at a discount, but it was still a whopping big expense for someone on my budget.

I never made a better investment. On the day I gave them their presents (a few days after Christmas), they played with that set for hours. In addition to the big "shared" gift, I'd given each of them a little gift of their own, but the girls quickly forgot those. Josh liked his gift because it was a wooden Thomas the Tank Engine that ran on the wooden train tracks. He took that little engine to bed with him for weeks. It was one of the few toys he really bonded with.

I kept the trains with me, bringing them over on visiting nights and on baby-sitting days, and taking them with me when I left. In part, this was a favor to Nora — she had plenty of toys and building sets to pick up already. It was also for my benefit; I'd worked so hard to acquire those trains that I didn't want the pieces lost and scattered all over the house. Either way, it meant that the trains weren't an everyday toy, and their novelty never wore off.

Once or twice during the next year, I found I had a little extra money to spend on more tracks or accessories for the train set. One addition was a pair of engines from the Thomas series. I handed the red James to Josh because he seemed to be fond of James on the TV show, and Becca got the green Henry because I had to give her something. I had meant to make them additions to the set, not separate gifts to the kids, but I should have realized the twins would take it their way.

Becca always thought of Henry as hers. When I arrived for a visit and opened the train box, she would stand next to me and wait, smiling, until I handed her the green engine. She sometimes used it to re-enact scenes from the TV show, which was more interaction than she showed in many other areas of life.

Abigail's interest in the trains waned after a few weeks. She would occasionally want to play with them, but it was hard for her to get a train away from her little brother. Her principal interest was in rearranging the tracks to make her own layout, after the twins went to bed.

Becca never lost interest, but she had problems getting Josh to relinquish a train for her to play with. I took to confiscating an engine and a few freight cars from him and explaining to both of them, "Becca's train!" She would couple them together into a train, struggling with the magnetic couplers now and then, and set off down the tracks. Her favorite part of the set was the drawbridge, which went up and down when she turned a crank.

As for Josh, the train set was his favorite toy ever, bar none. The moment I walked into the house, he would rush into the room, almost ignoring me, looking for the train box. He learned to put the sections of track together long before Rebecca tried it. He also enjoyed the drawbridge, but not like Becca did: he liked to raise the bridge and then push his train off the edge. His favorite part was definitely the tunnel. He would lay his head on the rug so he was at eye level with the tracks, and push his train back and forth, in and out of the tunnel repeatedly. "We won't ask Freud what he'd make of that," I remarked to Nora one night; she laughed.

Given a chance, he would grab every car and engine and make the longest train possible. If Becca left her train alone for more than a minute or two, it was gone, absorbed into the Josh-train. He would play with that set from the moment I walked in until it was time for bed. Or longer.

One night, he was busy with the trains, and he totally ignored my repeated requests to let me change his diaper and put on his pajamas. This wasn't like him; he was usually very cooperative at bedtime. So Nora tried, in her pleasant Mommy voice. "Josh, it's bedtime. Let me change your diaper."

Autism or no autism, he could communicate some things loud and clear, and the look he gave Nora was as blatantly defiant as if he'd said, "Forget it!" Then he went back to his trains. I had to hide a smile. She finally picked him up and carried him upstairs to get him ready for bed.

Chapter 7: The Last Year - 1994

I had brought a small section of his wooden train set to keep him busy while we waited to see various specialists. It turned out to be even more useful than that; the doctors wanted to watch him play, so they could assess his abilities, and he refused to touch the hospital's toys. If they hadn't seen him assembling the wooden tracks and playing with the train's magnetic couplers, they never would have had a clue as to what he was capable of.

They wanted to check his hearing, so Nora took him into the hearing-test booth. Did they seriously expect my goon to wear earphones? He tore them off, and did his best to dismantle the booth before they decided his hearing was okay.

After about three hours, they finally brought the three of us into an office and confirmed the diagnosis: autism. It was a relief to finally know, but it was also a hammer-blow to our dreams for the little guy. Nora had envisioned him going to college and getting married; I'd dreamed of taking him to baseball games and visiting the old warships at Battleship Cove together. Now, none of this would ever be.

Nora took Becca in for her appointments two weeks later. I stayed home with Josh because he and Ken still couldn't get along. Nora returned after lunch, exhausted, with the same diagnosis. She said somebody would probably want to do a study on our children, because it was extremely rare for fraternal twins to both suffer from autism. "Big deal," I thought.

- # -

Nora threw herself into learning about autism with a zeal I'd never seen in her before. She read everything she could get her hands on — books, magazines, flyers from the Autism Society, you name it. She soon decided what each child needed most in special-needs schooling, and set about getting it.

I took a lot of time off from work that spring and summer, baby-sitting my kids while Nora went to bat for them. She took on entrenched bureaucracies — the North Attleboro school board and several private home-care organizations — and won, helped only by one advocate from the Association for Retarded Citizens. If one group didn't follow through on their promises, she'd find another. It was probably the first time in her life when her natural stubbornness and determination to get her own way could have a positive impact, and she made the most of it. I went along for a few of the twins' evaluations at various schools, but mostly I stayed in the background.

I did almost no homework, as far as autism went. I read a book or two, and I studied all the papers Nora gave me. But the work she was doing seemed so complete, I didn't see the point in trying to keep up with her. I just listene