Prolific: Farm Life Multiplied

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My brain was buzzing that night, all the next day, and still when it got to be actual Christmas.

Kelly filled in the other girls with the outlines of the story, not the specifics at my request, since I didn't want them reaching out to mom and setting things in motion that would be hard to stop.

The idea that I might have grandparents, and mom never mentioned hers, told me there was more to this story than what I knew. At least, at one point I had grandparents in Coral Gables, and I might still.

I had my birth certificate, complete with a blank for the father's name, so I didn't know what my real last name might be. She'd told me, but, maybe she wasn't being honest at that point in the conversation, I never knew. Maybe, maybe now.

Sandy and Mom weren't married, she'd said 'boyfriend' (engaged), so maybe I'd have to do some sleuthing to find the situation. An engagement announcement in the paper? A Datsun crash? It'd be in the December of the year before I was born, in Palo Alto, or near it, two Stanford students...

I had a very, very busy year coming up then, and I hadn't even started my doctoral work yet.

== Chapter: Creations ==

The first conception date was in early August, so we expected (via a large calendar on the dining room wall) the first delivery on April 28th. But, with first births, we had some preemies. Happily, none were earlier than 33 weeks (38 is normal), for that person, April 2nd.

No April fool's babies here!

Of course, none of us had ever given birth before, so new things were coming.

I wasn't allowed in the delivery room because given the culture and time, that wasn't common, but I waited with everyone else. We got news of a healthy, happy baby girl, Esmerelda, 4 pounds 5 ounces, on the light side but healthy enough. Dana's great-great-grandmother's name was Esmerelda, and there was MUCH rejoicing!

Our band of pregnant women students had made some waves on campus, but with Father Tony's and Sister Bella's help, talking about how life finds a way to bring joy, the conversations were mostly about what a great thing it was that the women who were pregnant were able to be together and help each other.

No mention was made of me, of course, the landowner, but that was by design.

Esmerelda became "Essie" about 5 minutes after she came home and instantly had (82 - 6), over 76 mothers, not even counting the two older women we took tea with who were pediatrics nurses and very helpful when it came to answering questions about what 'normal' was.

The house was not quiet.

My bedroom being near the house's central hallway (and subject to some shouting), I spent some nights sleeping in the (renovated) barn to find some quiet when everyone seemed to be awake and anxious or a baby was crying and it was better to be downstairs and away from those trying to sleep.

This isn't to say I was lazy - far from it - just that most of my work was doing the lifting and toting of heavy things since the pregnant ones were sometimes not allowed to, and the ones who'd recently given birth weren't allowed to either.

Yee's ability to cook was obviously paused when she gave birth to Joseph, an anglicized version of her grandfather's name. The restaurant where Yee had first worked had a short-order cook Yee respected, so we hired that cook for about 3 weeks to give Yee a total break, though when Yee came back she was mostly directing others so she didn't work too hard immediately post-partum.

The cook, Lizzie, was married and happy with 2 kids, so I ensured she wasn't put into any kind of sleeping-with-me rotation, it would have been very wrong. She was given the Tea Ritual, and encouraged to live a more healthy life, but it was far more of a hired-help thing.

Lizzie's hours were long but well paid, and she did us a mitzvah (as Abby says) by keeping cold meals prepared and ready to go at a moment's notice. She also made us comfort food when we needed it, and gave all-around good cheer and advice since her kids were in elementary school and she'd seen enough to know the ropes.

As more and more bumps turned into brats (not my phrase), certain economies of scale emerged. Sure, everyone breast-fed, but they could share that duty around a little and expand out the term mom to more than their own child.

In a solidly-wow turn of fate, given who was in rotation and when, I sometimes spent a night with someone recovering from childbirth; two in bed meant my body's hyperactive libido could do its thing, but we all got hugs and snuggles and felt loved and cared for.

Where was I in this life, though, as kids are coming and the house gets louder and more complicated and wow what's happening?

I was just living in the moment. I had school and studies and then summer and helping everywhere and odd situations that just came from living with over 80 women.

Were parts of this good? HELL YEAH! Were parts of this hell? OH BOY!!! Burps and shits and spit-ups and poop-splosions and all those things, yeah, that's part of the 'tapestry of life' colored in off-yellow and shades of brown.

Cuteness and joy make all that hassle disappear.

Well - not disappear, really, it actually is a hassle, and we all just learn to live with different hassles as we get older.

Good and bad come with all of it.

On the cosmic scale, did I end up with a vast good? Did it balance? Does it ever?

To rephrase: Did my alcoholic-mom's hellacious shit-life childhood balance the sex?

What I had there wasn't just sex. It was love, and the sex was a by-product. But the sex wasn't the primary part of it. The primary part was love.

Yes, you say, but did it Balance?!?!'

I have to say, Definitely Cannot say yes or no. It's PROFOUNDLY not up to me to make such statements. Just like, it's not up to me to decide for the women if their lives were best served by having kids at an earlier age and in a different situation than they would have imagined.

That said, these kids and my roommate's relationships DEFINITELY grew from the earliest moments into situations of love and mutual support, a family that wasn't related but increasingly was related by having a father in common with others there.

I couldn't be their husband, not all of them, egads no!

I could do some of the things husbands do, I could kiss and love and help and provide, better than a lot of spouses, for sure, and better than a lot of fathers, for the kids, but far worse than others, and wow would it be presumptive of me to say as little time as I could give for each kid was 'enough'. But, the kids had more mothers than any other situation I could imagine, and the caring attention alongside.

Still, I did make stupid decisions sometimes, and poor choices, and was short-tempered and was less easily forgiving than I should have been, because of many things. I'd chart my own failings, and not try to fawn off these errors as 'my upbringing' or 'tiredness' or anything else that might or might not be reasonable.

I think of myself as a mostly normal guy, put in extraordinary circumstances. Some might want to be where I was and am, and others might regard it as hell, in some way, but I'm ready to say how much I feel blessed and loved and embraced by the souls of those... who share... the Farm.

My life was bountiful in many, many ways.

Chapter: Epilogue

All names and places have been changed. Enough small distortions have been added there's literally no way to track down who or where I am from this.

Of 78 pregnancies that first year, we had 17 miscarriages, and then 17 new pregnancies to replace them, chins up and fully informed on the odds, and 16 of those worked. The last one took 3 times for the charm to stick.

No child was named Kevin, Jr., or variations thereupon. I had a rule.

As we gained children, our level of risque-behavior dropped to near zero. There was just too much risk of someone else on the property, or a kid wandering nearby, etc. Locked doors, double checked, with some attention to lowered sound levels. Fun still happened, but well out of sight.

My mother went into inpatient alcoholism treatment and promptly lost her job at the accountant's firm. The accountant/boss was a fellow drunk.

Mom got sober that first year for a while, fell off, got back on, and that repeated a couple of times before it mostly stuck.

When it looked like mom was solid and she had her life together, we had her Drink the Tea. Her set of rules was different from the others, a list voted on by my roommates so I didn't have too much influence.

Though Mom swears like a sailor, her single-wide near the stables is just the right distance for both of us. Her transformation even led to her finishing her degree - in mathematics.

My grandmother Stacey was still alive when I found and visited her. Her husband, my grandfather, had passed away years before. I brought Jay and her son Dean to visit her, not my first born but one who could be a representative. Also it was my first ride on an airplane - amazing!

I didn't enlighten Stacey about my full situation, instead describing myself as a "caretaker" at a "group home" without saying which state I'm in. We're pretty careful about secrecy.

Most women stayed, among the initial group, for a long time, being nearly constantly pregnant or not as was their whim. Some wanted big families, some didn't. Some who left to give birth elsewhere came back, and some didn't.

I said, do what's right for you. Practical life-choices depend on academic interests, life goals, parents being dicks, or just falling back in love with a guy they knew.

Almost all of them finished their degrees, and it was a mixed bag of who went on to do Good Things for the world, but as far as I could tell, they were all loving moms, however near or far from us they settled.

As women left, we found their empty living spaces were too empty. So, someone reached out to someone they knew, and the magic of the farm happened (my roommates gave them the tea).

I was not involved in the choosing of most things. I was there as a daddy, a fun, caring, loving, playing, praising, question-asking daddy.

One of our criteria for who could live with us changed when we admitted we were both too (white or Korean). Thus, we added ethnicities and smart, capable international students to our group. Every woman we added, though, turned out to be sharp as a tack. I never doubted that this was part of the Farm Magic, or the Tea itself, to draw people who were Just Right.

The Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Unitarian, and Presbyterian churches in town, as well as the Jewish Students Org (and some others) "adopted" us and offered various kinds of help in exchange for their youth or group retreats being held in our Frugalt Retreat Center (a large set of buildings we added near the lake).

As much as the grapes and vineyards were worthy pursuits, we changed over most of that land to greenhouses and rooming houses, all set up to be mostly self-sufficient. These women were family, part of the group, but there was a limited amount of space in the house and we didn't want to keep people living hidden in stables.

Not all of the pregnancies (of course!) were mine. Enough of them were of other people that the outside story stuck, that we were a place of refuge and help and encouragement for young student mothers.

I believe, though I'm not sure, that all of the women who came to us already pregnant stayed for another pregnancy, but I could be wrong. I'd have to ask our historian (a definite house-job worthy of praise and respect).

The horseback part of the operation, utterly isolated from our living quarters and situation by various barriers, thrived.

Thousands took horseback riding lessons. NONE were granted access to the main house, of course, we had strict boundaries.

Visitors, tour groups, executive retreats, etc, also toured, walked, mountain-biked, rode horseback, camped, bird-watched, etc., on our property. We had docents (ecology professors and classes, etc.) lead nature-center exploration trips focusing on insects, or birds, native plants, or how to make a garden Really Grow (hint: the secrets are Lots of Old Poop and seed harvesting from the best plants of the previous year).

A grassroots campaign (we started it but it had its own momentum) pushed the college to build an on-campus free childcare center, helping far, far more people.

I earned my Ph.D. four years after starting the farm venture, and built a small research lab not so far away from the farm (okay, across the highway and down a bit) to study the origin of addictions and the effect of various psychoactive substances on patterns of addiction. This may or may not have been influenced by substances found in the tea.

My interest in disparate subjects has not faded. I have journal articles now, but I'm not telling how many or in what subjects.

The Farm's finances are now even more solid than before - I invested wisely.

Our financial success has led to setting up similar but independent Frugalt Farms (by other names), in the USA and elsewhere. Their setups are more traditional with women joining AFTER they're pregnant, and no association with me (nor any Tea ceremonies).

Finally, it's (shall we agree) at least 10 years after my first children were born, and the effect of the Tea and Farm have proved permanent. Every single woman I've been with has found joy and love (not all permanently, but that's life) and their children were provided for.

Some significant research has revealed the mix of plants the 'special' tea came from. No, we're not going to share it.

All of "my" children (at least as far as I can tell) are safe and in stable households with one or more loving parents. Ann, Kelly, Jay, and Yee have stayed with me. Some mothers stayed single, but most married someone after they graduated and left.

Being prolific means being Bounteous, as I mentioned at the start. Agnes bequeathed a bounty to me, for whatever reason. That gift quite literally multiplied, yielding a city full of kids and adults enlightened about nature, over 500 graduated women, many more who chose not to graduate for whatever reason, and at last count, over 4,300 babies with my genetics.

The Foundation that we established funds scholarships worldwide in subjects ranging from ocean ecology to addiction-cure research. We even developed a web presence that helps people.

By the above number of children, I'm probably the most prolific man of recent times (in the USA at least). But, I don't prize the numbers. I prize the love I've been able to give and receive.

Be free and profligate with good care and kind attention to those you are near.

Be bounteous in your love.

Be prolific.

== The End ==