The Sound of Shattering Glass

Newsletter 2019-05-06

We have four kids and four bedrooms. On the surface, the math seems simple enough: Each kid should get a bedroom. Of course, that wouldn't leave any place for my wife and me to sleep, which might be okay. We could live somewhere down the road and leave the kids to their own devices. Lord of the Flies is basically a parenting manual.

Unfortunately, letting feral children raise themselves is legally tenuous, so my wife and I still live in the house with them. Back before we finished the attic into a master suite, we had six people and three bedrooms. We put two kids in the first bedroom, two kids in the second bedroom, and ourselves in the third. The kids aren't old enough to resent sharing a room yet. In fact, they preferred it as a form of protection. The night is dark and full of terrors, or so I've been told by a certain HBO show that lately has been too dark to see anyway.

This raised the conundrum of what to do when Lola and I moved up to the attic, leaving our bedroom on the second…