"The villages are full o' little children."

The littlest of our bunch just moved into her big-girl bed. She's three now, and two days before her birthday we disassembled the crib, borrowed the biggest's top bunk (with his grudging approval, on condition that it was only temporary until we can afford a bed), and set up her new slumber station. She is pleased as punch. She's clearly ready for it, too, because she has not once climbed out of it when she wasn't supposed to.

And now the crib is destined for a relative's home, to be used by a future baby. And so that's it? The kid spends three years of her life in this little protective cocoon, and now just like that she's grown up? No, of course not. She's still a little goofball of a babe. She's still in diapers. She still has a paci (although as far as she knows, three-year-olds leave their pacis in their beds). She isn't in school yet. She's still very much a baby, just a baby who is allowed to get herself out of bed in the morning to play. But I'm totally bummed out when I think that she is growing and changing. If I had my way, I'd always have a two-year-old.

I didn't really have this thought when Biggest and Middle left their cribs. The cribs then were just moving to the next in line (or to the dumpster, as the case was with the hand-me-down crib that got squeezed through too many tight doorways and never quite made it back to rectangle shape). So the parental anxiety about the Big Kid Bed was evenly matched with the excitement of a new baby--a replacement baby. But now, with Littlest, no one is coming up from the minors to replace her as the baby in the lineup. She's it, at least as far as we know.

Which may get me to the real point (not that I had a point when I started writing beyond announcing the Big Girl Bed). We have three. We've replaced ourselves in the population plus one, doing our part for the future of social security (for better or worse). (This is more than most Europeans can say.) With three kids, we have reached the point where other people say, "I don't know how you can manage with three." Seems silly: three is not much harder than two. Three kids is not a big family. My grandmother had nine siblings. We both grew up as one out of four.

Anyway, now here is the point (maybe). We talk about whether or not we are "done," or whether or not our family is complete. But...is it up to Us? I think we are both trying hard to discern whether God has more children in store for us. Our own progeny? Adoption? Foster care? When I think of the so-called roadblocks--money, time, space, age, health--I get very discouraged about growing our family, although I don't really feel like we're complete. But then I think of people I know who are raising more kids with less, and I think that we could do that, too. Some nights, though, I check on my kids as they sleep, and I think that we five make a whole. All of this is to say I'm beginning to sense that perhaps He has plans for us. Not that He's told me what they are.

And so we talk and pray and wonder and wait. And we hold on to our faith in His mystery. I guess that's the real point.

"Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get."

I like tents. It's a weakness. Some people use drugs, I buy tents. I have two backpacking tents, a bivy sack, and three family tents. One of those is a cheap, roomy but very leaky tent from a little-known company (perhaps they confused hydrophobic and hydrophilic), and one is a more expensive, less-roomy, watertight tent made by a well-known mountaineering gear company. I don't use either of them much anymore, because the third family tent is the Coleman Instant Tent.

I don't need to waste words when you can watch the video. Cool, huh? It works like that in real life, too. This particular tent was more of an impulse buy than even I am used to. We were on our way to a big camping trip with the extended family. Stopped at Sam's Club an hour from the campsite for ice and food for the cooler. Buzzed through the camping aisle "just to check". And boom. There it sat, in a beat-up box. The Coleman Instant Tent, in real life. Cheaper than online. Available in store. An INSTANT tent, that could INSTANTLY be mine! I pulled it out and checked it. Still looked factory-rolled. Just the box was beat-up, and that's why they put stuff in boxes. I bought it, having promised my wife that she'd love the space inside. (I had a vague idea about the space inside.)

I could barely fit it in the car. I had to throw the box away and do some major repacking while the family sat stewing in the minivan, the ice began to melt, and a fellow member of Sam's Club mocked me ("You shoulda bought a full-size van." Thanks, pal. Helpful advice). I made it fit.

Set it up in the gathering rain. My 7-year-old and I set it up in two minutes without reading the directions--not bad. Not long after dinner, the heavens opened and we took shelter in the new tent. Noticed...condensation? Nope. Rain. Leaks in the seams, and some seepage through the fabric. Not as much as on Super-Leaky Family Tent #1, but definitely water in my tent via the roof. Well, the more fool I for thinking that because it didn't come with a rainfly, it didn't NEED a rainfly. So, in the dark and stormy night, I was outside rigging a temporary fly with the Amazing Blue Tarp (basically as important to a man as duct tape). It was ugly, as you can sort of see here on the right in the Tent City picture (thanks, Ordinary Time). It was hard to get in and out, because we had to lift the tarp to access the door. But it kept us dry during a very wet trip.

Well, when we got home, we decided that this tent really was the most comfortable of the two usable tents--floor space, headroom, ventilation, ease of setup and entry...it really is a nice tent, aside from the leaking. So I set about making Amazing Blue Tarp Rainfly version 2. I bought a 16'x20' tarp and some adjustable aluminum poles. I scavenged poles from the unsalvageably leaky tent. I used lots of nylon clothesline and duct tape. Here it is:

Pretty sweet, huh? It works, too. The scavenged poles are underneath the fly, inserted into duct tape pockets (the pockets will need frequent maintenance). Two run across the tent and one runs the length from back to the front of the nice big covered porch. Still good ventilation. We took it on the next trip. We set up in the rain, so I put the fly up. As soon as I set it up, the rain stopped and didn't come back all weekend. It works! The one problem is that the fly adds ten minutes to the 1-minute setup time of the tent. Oh well. What does a 1,000% increase matter, really (is that the math)? I have, since these pictures, made it more taut and decreased the footprint of the guylines.

Now, some of you may be wondering why I didn't just seal the seams over the factory tape. I could, and that would probably stop the leaks. But we actually really like having the big old fly out over the door. It's comforting.

One final note. This whole thing has caused me to question the strategy behind building car-camping family tents. Yes, it must look nice, and yes, it must be relatively easy to set up. But why does weight matter? Why not add a waterproof fly? I'm carrying the tent a total of thirty feet, maybe, from the shelf to the car to the tent site. I don't need ultralight materials. I need water protection!

"The Beginning of Everything...

was in a railway train upon the road from Mhow to Ajmir." So writes Kipling in his long short story, "The Man Who Would Be King". (Read the story!). I wouldn't be a king, but I would have been other things at various times in my life.

I used to think I would be a baseball player, but I missed Little League tryouts three years in a row, and then I got into acting, so I had no time for organized sports. Then I thought, for sure, a movie actor. But I realized I didn't want to be a waiter. Next came they steady work of the movie stuntman: too much pain, not enough fame. A firefighter? Lousy hours, slightly stressful. A radio dj: have you heard my voice? A sewer worker in France: don't even ask. Alas, the killer instinct needed for such cutthroat and demanding trades has always eluded me, and Time has a way of snaking a path under our feet and shooing us along until turning onto certain other paths is no longer realistic. Plus, I'm older than Mike Lowell, and he just retired.

So what's left? What would I be? Husband, father, teacher, happy and content in all three and trying to be a man of God. That's the man who is. The Man Who Would Be would be better at each of those things than he is now. I suppose I should try to be a better friend, too. Sigh. And probably a better relative. And a better pet owner. Sigh. Work, work, work!