Waffle on the Warpath

Newsletter 2021-11-28

“Are you going for a basketball team?”

It was a question I got often back when my wife and I were still in our family’s expansion phase. With five kids, I could have had a solid starting lineup for a girls’ hoops squad, although with my wife’s vertically-challenged genetics, we would have had nothing but point guards. It would have been hard to win many championships with zero rebounds per game. But why stop with a basketball team? There was one family I knew growing up that had enough kids for all eleven spots on a football team plus a few substitutes. Tell me you’re Catholic without telling me you’re Catholic. With a mere four kids, though, my wife Lola and I don’t have enough kids to fill up any starting squad by ourselves. That’s fine with me. I’m not building a team. I’m building an army.

It was a plan years in the making, although calling it a “plan” at all implies more foresight than I’m capable of. I don’t have many passions, but those few I do have, I stick with forever because…