My wife left me yesterday. Don’t worry, though -- she’ll come crawling back, just like always. That’s how tired she typically is after a long business trip. What did you think I was talking about?

She flew out early yesterday afternoon for a two-week training session in Peoria, Illinois. Leaving me with a couple of things to handle.

Thing 1 is a charming-but-precocious, preternaturally smart seven-year-old with a penchant for stalling and losing focus on the world around him as he brings it all to bear on some fascinating fact in an almanac, or something shiny.

Thing 2 is a deceptively cute, street-smart three-year-old who reveals an evil glint in his eyes whenever he smiles at me, and who has an appetite for sugar and destruction.

For ten business days, my mission is to wake them, dress them, feed them, drop them off, go to work, pick them up, feed them, bathe them, dress them, and get them to bed. It might not sound so bad, but with my wife out of town, you have to understand -- the total parental manpower in this household has been reduced by a good 75 percent....

I still remember the wisest thing my father said to me when I was a child. I’d just made a helpful driving suggestion on one of our cross-country vacations, and he replied: “You’ll have to drive one of these some day, smart guy.”

Now that I have, I understand what he was getting at. When a dad is at the end of his rope, he’d probably just as soon use it to bind and gag his young passengers. A day behind the wheel can make any parent feel this way. Anything longer than a grocery run and I’m ready to slam my head in the tailgate. All from dealing with a mere 25 percent of my parents’ responsibilities.

Yep, they had eight kids – practically their own ball team. Yet somehow, they never seemed to have a ball….

Each summer, they’d load up our 1971 wood-paneled Plymouth Satellite station wagon (the same model the Brady Bunch drove) with a trunk, ice chest, picnic basket, and portable potty, then brave the Interstates with half a dozen backseat drivers (the age spread among us was wide enough that, fortunately for them, my parents never had to take all eight of us at once). We’d set out early in the morning, leaving the comfort of our suburban home in Northern Virginia to face the grueling full-tank increments of sitting in the car for 5-6 hours. (I’m pretty sure Dad’s bladder capacity was higher than that of the gas tank.)

We had several favorite destinations, alternating between them from one summer to the next – Nags Head, North Carolina; York Beach, Maine; or Estes Park, Colorado. As we covered up to 1700 miles on the road, the kids had opportunities to learn about American geography, as well as paternal vocabulary. Dad could let fly with some creative curses, and road trips were a sure way to stoke that creativity.

Event precursors
My wife, Anne, and I are happily married and enjoy our lives together; after some discussion we decided to add to our family. Following a few heartbreaking miscarriages, we chose to adopt a child. Anne contacted multiple adoption agencies all over the country, some state-sponsored and some not; each had a website with photos and a brief description of children available. Most of Anne’s inquiries resulted in the children we found interesting no longer being available or some unlisted criteria had to be met for us to adopt the specified child.

Anne then had discussions via the Internet with several females of varying ages who claimed to be pregnant but unable to care for their unborn children adequately. After more time, sometimes weeks, in discussions with each, they all turned out to be fakes, phonies, frauds and liars. Not only were my wife and I angry, but we were also hurt because we had exposed ourselves to these manipulators! These impostors left us very distrusting of nearly each case we had later seen.