these are not my daughters

My sister posted this picture on Facebook a few days ago with a note wondering how that man in the photo could be anyone but me. It isn't. It's my dad. Circa 1964. Still, even I did a double-take. He's about five years younger in that photo than I am now but the resemblance is downright alarming. I think the picture is flipped and that's his wedding band on his left hand we see (I'm basing this on the location of his shirt pocket -- men's dress shirts do not come with pockets on the right), but I wear a ring on my right ring-finger besides my wedding band on the left so it just added to the initial shock of thinking I was looking at a picture of me with tiny versions of four of my sisters. (And if you've been reading this thing for any length of time, those four adorable little girls grew up to be four of our most reliable commentors, so thanks Margaret, KT, Judy, and Gibs).

Not in the picture -- or in existence at the time -- are children five through eight. Older brother Paul, sister Annette, me, and baby brother Daniel. As I mentioned, that picture is from 1964. About three years later there would be three more kids on the scene. By the time my dad was the age I am now he had seven kids. SEVEN! And there was still one more to come. I barely have a handle on one. Ugh. Maybe when you have a gaggle (or a panic or a murder or whatever you call a large group of children) it gets easier? Like you can just think of them all as one entity rather than individuals and you just have to feed the entity and make sure it's in its bed at the end of the day. Whatever happens between meals during waking hours is up to the fates to decide.

Of my seven siblings, five have children. We are the only slackers who have just one. Through lagomorphic fertility and intermarriage those five siblings are responsible for 24 of Kiddo's cousins. I don't know if having a plurality (or flock or parliament or whatever) of young'ns is easier than having one but maybe one of them will favor us with a story in the comments. Oh, if only they pick up on my hint...

Just last night Mimi mentioned that sometimes she feels bad because Kiddo doesn't have any siblings. I go back and forth on that all the time. It isn't practical at this point to have another kid (nevermind if it's even possible) anyway. But it did make my heart race for a while. Like maybe we are doing her a disservice by not providing another person who knows why her parents are so damn weird.

Speaking of weird parents, I realized many years ago that despite all of the effort I made as a younger man to be nothing like my father, I was just taking the long way around to being exactly like him. He and I joke that I have "resigned myself to it." I look like him. I talk like him. I act like him. I kind of even dress like him. I'm not on to suspenders and red shirts every day, but can that be far off? Looking at that picture up top, I hope I have enough photos of me and Kiddo together. I realize every second of her life is being documented (the luck of the first-born -- as seventh born, I'm surprised anyone even has a picture of me), but I'm usually behind the camera. I'll have to be sure to get in there with her once in a while. Maybe when she's 43 she'll get as much joy from a photo of us together as I am getting from that picture of my pop and his first four.

And for whatever it's worth, he'll be 85 in December. A milepost I am more than half-way to.