This Is Why I Had Children: To

A Safety Net Of Small White Lies Can Be The Bedrock Of A Successful Marriage. You Wouldn't Believe How Cheaply I Can Do A Kitchen Renovation.

And I Don't Have To Listen To A Sermon To Know What To Think Or Feel About Them. It's Almost As If I Absorbed Completely What Mattered Most To Me, And The Rest Could Go.

Raising Children Is A Spur-of-the-moment, Seat-of-the-pants Sort Of Deal, As Any Parent Knows, Particularly After An Adult Child Says That His Most Searing Memory Consists Of An Offhand Comment In The Car On The Way To Second Grade That The Parent Cannot Even Dimly Recall.

Maybe I Had Three Children In The First Place So I Wouldn't Ever Have To Play Board Games. In My Religion, Martyrs Die.

You Realize That These Accidental Decisions You Make About Changing Jobs, About Moving Into An Apartment Where You Make New Friends And Confidants, About Going To One City Over Another, That Sometimes They're Completely Arbitrary Decisions That You Haven't Put As Much Thought Into As Perhaps You Should Have, And Yet They Change The Course Of Your Whole Life.