Peticanoe

It is not entirely unheard of to have children in one’s twenties.  I’m 27.  By this time in my dad’s life, he had two kids (me and my sister).  It is not as common to have three sons all over the age of 14 at this point in one’s life.  In fact, I hope it is super uncommon.  Thirteen year olds should not, as a rule, have children.My eldest son is Nathan.  He’s only about 5 years younger than I am.  He adopted Amy and I as parents shortly after we got married while we were attending church at Waterloo.  I can’t remember the exact circumstances of the adoption but for a while, he called us mom and dad.  This stopped around the time that his actual dad passed away (at Christmas time, no less).  Nathan (well, his wife) is going to have an actual squalling and messy biological child this year, so that is pretty exciting.  I am kind of glad he doesn’t call me dad anymore because, though I am balding, 27 is far too young to be a grandparent.

My second son is one of the students at Amy’s school.  We’ve been supervising the dormitories on long weekends since the year Amy first started teaching.  Dominic has stayed with us almost every weekend since then and has started calling us mom and dad on occasion.  He will sometimes call Amy ‘mom’ at school and one of the other long weekend students started calling her ‘mommy’ which is just kind of weird.  Dominic’s birthday is a week after mine (as is Brian’s, another of the long weekend students) so we all went out for sushi together last year to celebrate.

My third and youngest son I have not yet met.  His name is Daniel or Danny.  He’s from Columbia and will be here this coming Sunday for a month.  He is coming as part of an exchange through Red Leaf Student Programs with a group of about 20 other students for a fairly intensive ESL program.  They’re going to get to do a whole bunch of touristy stuff up here and make some friends.  Amy has been corresponding with him via e-mail and she thinks we will get along well as we are both into all kinds of music.  Amy’s spent a good chunk of her March Break getting the spare room ready for him.  I know almost nothing about Columbian culture so this should be an interesting learning experience.

swim out past the breakers