And another thing. . .

 

"Oh, Terry, you would have made such a good father!"  "Geez, man, I'm so sorry!"  "Such a shame!  "You're such a kid yourself, you would have been a perfect father!"

 

Over the years, these words have come at me with a regularity that until now, I regarded with the same disdain as those lamentations that bordered on, "Too bad you're not thinner," or ". . .better looking," or " . . . richer."  Or whatever I'm not.

 

Irrelevant.

 

But now, and I believe with good reason, I take issue.

 

Within a month after marrying my first wife Betsy, she was diagnosed with a brutally brittle diabetes that wound up eventually killing her.  Back when she was diagnosed, the average life span after diagnosis was 17 years. Diagnosed in 1977, she died in 2010.

 

You could say she beat the odds, but in those years she had quintuple bypass surgery with the unfortunate byproduct of a sternum infection that never healed afterward, suffered horrendous extremity pain as severe diabetics do, winding up in a wheel chair, and basically went through Hell the last 10 years of her life before she died, staring directly at her impending demise.

 

This is not to say she didn't bring a lot of it on herself.  She never gave up smoking, I am told.  She never, EVER, gave up chocolate, I am also told.  And from the beginning, she took personal and total control of her insulin intake to accommodate her excesses.  This caused a great deal of friction between us, as you may imagine.

 

So she did well in terms of "years lived," but she paid a high price to do so.

 

But back in the early days of 1978, when her getting pregnant would have been a death sentence to her, she and I both agreed that the way to safely prevent any pregnancy for her would be for me to have a vasectomy, allowing her to get off "the Pill," so bad for known diabetics to take at that time.  Of course, unknown to me, she did not get off the pill, and with good reason since I was not the only source of semen she was receiving at the time. . . (Please note the absence of editorial content here.)

 

Nonetheless, my best friend, who was a trauma surgeon, did the honors and proudly proclaimed after the outpatient procedure that he tied my tubes so far up I'd "have trouble putting [my] arms down for the next few days."  Indeed, at the age of 27, I was deliberately, irrevocably, sterile.

 

And after that, it started.  "Too bad!" and, "You'll never know the joys of children."

 

Within a year after my 6 year marriage to Betsy ended, I fell in love with Kathy, a woman in the end stages of her divorce proceeding, who had three children (at that time,14, 11 and 7 - two older boys and a girl.)

 

I wound up marrying Kathy.  And in the process, I stayed around long enough to raise her children in a way their father never could. Emotionally,  Hell, lovingly, even.

 

This comes to mind because the oldest boy (he's the only one married thus far) came to our house this week with his wife and his two daughters, now 14 and 10, now beautiful creatures who shine sunlight on you whenever they speak to you. And they came from far away to meet the newest member of our family.

 

But I digress. Because, it turns out that I wound up losing Kathy after 16 years to a line dancing acquaintance of hers, casting me adrift once again.  (Please note the absence of editorial content here.)

 

Sparing you details, at least in this post, I moved on.  Until, I'm convinced, the Higher Power that controls my life blessed me with Sherry.  And, of course, her daughter, Bree.  Ah. . .

 

Bree was a challenge to me it turns out because her dad, her idol, her best friend, died way before he should have.  She was soon to go to college, her dad's alma mater, and he was a teacher who, when he left, tore a huge hole in the hearts of every one who knew him.

 

That was the world I stepped into, not immediately, but a year and a half later.  And in my style, not on tiptoes, but with Gusto!  I came to the Christmas party Sherry was throwing (Yes, I was invited!) and told whomever was listening, "Hi!  My name is Terry. I know Sherry! And who are you?"

 

Bree dutifully answered that question with an "I'm Bree," and I believe those were the only words she said to me that day.

 

We had work to do, and we did it, but that is not the purpose of what I'm telling you now. Because  during the course of the 14 years since that Christmas party, I've come to realize that the nomenclatures of "This is my ex-step child, So-and-So," or , "This is my future step-child, So-and-So," have absolutely No Meaning in my world. And so, for the uninformed and for all the future, I introduce my family as "This is my Bree," "This is my David," "This is my Michael," or "This is my Chrissy."  I'm through giving the back of my hand to whomever starts pointing their index finger at the imaginary family chart in front of them, trying to figure which child goes into what slot in that chart just to bring me up short.

 

And with the arrival of our newest grandchild (my Bree's first,) I realize that for someone who was never to know the joys of having children, I can point you to four examples of how wrong those pitiable sentiments were. And I challenge the world to show me how I am not "as blessed," if not more so, than they.