Susie Lloyd - Bless Me, Father, For I Have Kids

Bless Me, Father, for I Have Kids

Susie Lloyd

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Copyright 2009 Susie Lloyd

Also from Sophia Institute Press
by Susie Lloyd:

Please Dont Drink the Holy Water!

Copyright 2009 Susie Lloyd

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved

Illustrations and cover design by Theodore Schluenderfritz

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lloyd, Susie, 1966Bless me, Father, for I have kids / Susie Lloyd.p. cm. ISBN 978-1-933184-40-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Home schooling Humor. 2. Catholics Humor. I. Title. PN6231.H56L65 2009 814.6 dc22200900334809 10 11 12 13 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the children,
who are frequently called expensive.
To us you are priceless.

Familiarity Breeds

Four, five, six, seven... Are all these kids yours? I feel sorry for ya!

Unto Us a Son Is Born

Gender has been identified as male.

I was sitting alone in my bedroom leafing through my prenatal records just to see if I had any communicable diseases when the words jumped off the page. Theyd put it in bold; as if finding out I was carrying a boy after six girls wouldnt be quite staggering enough. My first reaction was to cry.

Images of a nameless, faceless son, adrift in a sea of estrogen, floated through my mind. Granted, this was probably due to a momentary surge of hysterione the pregnancy hormone. You never know when to take it seriously.

The next thing I did was tell my husband. I was counting on him to talk me down. You see, Greg is not one of these sensitive males who are so in style these days. For instance, during a really poignant scene in a movie say, when the hero reveals himself to the heroine as the man who has loved her all along although she didnt know it and hes finally just about to kiss her Greg can be relied on to say, Wow! Hes a great actor!

In our household of seven females, we have enough romance movies to keep any boy chronically ill. Thats what worried me. How would a baby boy fit in?

What would he do with a drawerful of headless naked Barbies?

Would the girls tie an apron on him and make him play house?

Or make him stand in for the prince in their never-ending fairytale plays?

All this was what I wanted Greg to sort out for me. And more.

The more was the girls. You see, for years people had acted disappointed in our boyless family. During this last pregnancy, friends had been telling us to think positively, and relatives gave us blue blankies. Strangers analyzed my egg shape and pronounced that this time wed be lucky.

With no clue about the news Id just received, the girls handled this by declaring a pink crusade: proclaiming loud and clear to all and sundry who ventured to comment that we wanted another girl . Every day they primed the smallest soldier, our two-year-old, as if she were learning her catechism:

Melanie do you want a girl or a boy?

Boy!

No, no, someone would interject. You have to say girl last, and then shell get it right.

Melanie, do you want a boy or a girl?

Boy-girl!

Listen, Melanie. Boy or girl ? Boy or GIRL ?

No!

She finally got it right about six days before my due date, confessing under torture (they dangled a cookie over her head) that she wanted another sister.

A moment of triumph was planned for the octave after the little princesss birth. The girls would don their pink uniforms and march on parade. They toyed with the idea of each wearing a different word that would spell a message to the opinionated public: Its Another Girl Yahoo Pffllt! Melanie would wear the !

Greg assured me that all would be well in spite of these forebodings. We agreed not to tell the girls, but in the meantime wed start preparing.

Er... What are you gonna do if its a boy? I asked cautiously.

Then well wear black! retorted the General.

Right then and there I almost told them. Maybe they needed to know, in order to have time to adjust. I mean, God in His wisdom had ordained that I find out. He must have wanted me to be prepared. Should we do the same for the girls?

But Greg and I wanted them to have fun with the surprise. We stuck with the plan.

You know, youve told everybody you dont want a boy. And thats not really true, is it? Now, what if it is a boy how would you feel about declaring that?

It wont be, they said.

But just what if? I persisted. Will you... like him?

Of course we would like him!

I sighed in relief.

But it isnt going to happen.

Well, look. Just in case it does, you need to stop telling everybody you want a girl. Just say you want whomever God sends. God decides these things, and He has always known best. Isnt that the real message here? Girl or boy God decides and we are happy?

Okay. They looked at each other knowingly as if to say, well humor her .

In the meantime I started preparing for the little guy.

I bought a boys christening outfit on eBay and hid it away in my closet. There was no way I was going to put any son of mine into a satin gown, even if he wouldnt remember it.

Then I began making discreet inquiries among my friends. I approached one woman who had an only boy among four sisters. He seemed normal enough. Turns out her husband, too, had been the only boy. Normal again unless you count the fact that he understood womens feelings.

I also approached a young priest of my acquaintance. Let Greg raise him, was his advice. Greg whose idea of a date movie is The Godfather ? Sound counsel. The priest, a former Army captain, also offered to throw a ball with him. Have the girls play ball with him, too, he said glancing over at the teens as they giggled and posed for pictures to put on Facebook for the millionth time. It wont hurt them.

Yeah. It might even help. At that point they knew enough about sports to design T-shirts for sale in foreign countries. I used to see these things at open-air markets in Italy.

Amerikan Football
Yankes 10
Fliers 93

Okay: what to do in the event of a male invasion check .

I also had a pretty good idea of what not to do. Take, for instance, the family at my daughters co-op. They have a seven-yearold only boy. (Admittedly, he does resemble a cherub.) Unable to resist temptation, his sisters put him up on stage at every school event. They give him a microphone and accompany him on the piano while he sings cutesy songs. The audience gushes.

Bleah. What not to do check.

Then Greg and I went on to the problem of names. It wasnt that we couldnt find one we liked; it was that we couldnt narrow it down. With the girls, wed obviously had plenty of time to use up our supply of favorite names.

For the Boy, as far as Greg was concerned, nothing would do but the whole litany.

Not wanting to make the girls suspicious, we went to a diner so we could discuss it in private.

Peter, Greg said. We should name him for the feast that falls near his birthday.

But we dont have a special devotion to St. Peter, I objected. Now here are the saints I like...

Saints you like! my husband scoffed. Hah! Just name the child according to your whims. Be like the rest of the world!

The rest of the world names their kids Traylor and Trellis. Catholics name their kid after saints they have a devotion to.

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