Our house had six voices louder than any television, and most nights I fell asleep to the sound of at least two of them arguing about whose turn it was in the shower.
I was thirty-four, the father of five boys, and the husband of a woman who had wanted a daughter since long before she wanted me.
« I just wanted one. »
« Five boys, » Claire said with a sigh one Sunday, folding a mountain of small striped socks. « This has to be your fault somehow. »
« You keep saying that. »
« Because it keeps being true.
Our oldest was ten, our youngest two, with three more boys in between.
« I just wanted one, » she said to me once, in the dark, after our fifth son was born. « One little girl on my side of the house. »
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