Dad Is Fat (23 page)

Holidays inevitably mean family gatherings. For parents of young children, these become mandatory. No matter how you feel about your extended family or family gatherings you will be attending. This is because now the ultimate reason for attending family gatherings is for your children to have the time of their lives with their cousins.

Little kids
love
their cousins. I’m not being cute or exaggerating here. Cousins are like celebrities for little kids. If little kids had a
People
magazine, cousins would be on the cover. Cousins are the barometers of how fun a family get-together will be. “Are the cousins going to be there? Fun!” Of course, the reason cousins seem so special could be because they are always associated with positive events. Holidays, birthdays, summer vacations. Cousins are always at the right parties. There are always presents, candy, and swimming time with cousins. That is the cousin conundrum. Cousins are like cake. Does the cake make the event fun, or is it the fun event that
makes you like cake? Personally, I think it’s the cake. Doesn’t the word
cake
make you want cake? Ah, cake. What was I talking about?

Most of my kids haven’t even figured out that the parents of their precious cousins are actually children of siblings of Jeannie or me. “Wait, you’re Uncle Joe’s brother? What a coincidence!” To a child, there’s this intangible quality in a cousin. They are like brothers and sisters, but you don’t see them enough to get sick of them. The children of your siblings are God’s trick to keep you coming to family gatherings. “My extended family makes me crazy …, but the kids love it.”

I don’t want you to think I don’t love my extended family. I do. I just don’t want to be around them. Some of this is because I’m a loner. Some of this is because at family gatherings you are forced to face the short genetic distance between you and a clinically insane person. As a result, family gatherings always seem to coincide with brief periods of alcohol abuse on my part. I don’t drink that often, but when I get around my family— Glug, glug, glug. We’re not even arguing. “Good to see you.” Glug, glug, glug. “Yeah we had another kid.” Glug, glug, glug. It’s not just me. Everyone is drinking. Everything is an excuse to drink in my family. “Hey, it’s Fourth of July, have a beer.” “Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while, have a beer.” “Hey, you’re throwing up, have a beer.” I’ve never seen my family tree, and I think this is because someone chopped it down and built a bar with it.

Family gatherings are strange. Honestly, I’m always excited for family gatherings. “This is going to be great!” Then roughly a half hour later, I’m on the phone.

“How much would it cost to change my ticket?

“To this afternoon.

“Well, I’m at the airport now.

“Can I wait on the runway?

“I need to get out of here now!”

Of course, there’s a built-in forgetter with family. You only remember when you get there. “Oh, that’s right. Everyone’s crazy! No wonder I live three thousand miles away.” Glug, glug, glug. Mankind has made amazing advancements over the centuries, but we can’t remember our family is crazy. I bet cavemen remembered. “Me know every day yellow ball go down from sky, and my extended family is bonkers.” That is why the holidays are spaced out like they are. The day after the Fourth of July, you always tell yourself, “I’m never dealing with those weirdos again.” The day before Thanksgiving, “It’s going to be great to see everyone again.” Glug, glug, glug.

I have five children, and I don’t even own a farm. Traditionally, big families were necessary to help with the harvest, and there was also an understanding that some children may be lost to disease. Alas, it is a different era than
Little House on the Prairie
. Now we have tractors, and everyone is going to make it through the winter. Big families are very rare today. When I was growing up, it wasn’t uncommon to have a friend who came from a big family. As a matter of fact, we lived down the street from a family that had thirteen children. That seemed like a big family. Today, big families are like waterbed stores; they used to be everywhere, and now they are just weird. Admit it, whenever you see a waterbed store, you think, “Wow. That has to be a front for something illegal.” Big families are even more rare in New York City, where we live. When strangers find out I have five children, it usually makes even the toughest, most jaded New Yorker concerned. “Five kids? Are you creating your own nationality?”

Based on some reactions to hearing that I have five children, it seems as though people think that I’m ignorant of the fact that having five children is a huge task. People will say instructively, “Five kids, that’s a lot.” As if they’re educating me. Oh, really? I thought it was a small number of children. Wait, is “one” a smaller number than “five” or a larger number? I always get those two confused. Can I borrow your calculator?

Many times people say, “I don’t know how you handle five kids. I have one kid, and I can barely handle it!” Well, guess what? One kid is a lot. I could barely handle having one kid. I guess it’s kind of like that science experiment with the frog in a pot where you slowly turn the heat up on the water, degree by degree, so the frog doesn’t figure out what’s happening until he’s boiling and it’s too late. Well, I am that frog. I didn’t suddenly become the father of five children. That would be really overwhelming. Not that I’m
not
overwhelmed. At this point, the feeling of being overwhelmed overwhelms me. Thankfully,
the pregnancies and babies came one by one, each with their unique hurdles and victories. But the most entertaining gauge of our growing family was the mounting scale of reactions from friends and family.

We found out Jeannie was pregnant with Marre five weeks after we returned from our honeymoon. Yes, Jeannie is that fertile, or I’m that good at making babies. Or both. The point is, everyone was thrilled. There was a baby shower. There was endless advice from friends who already had a kid. “Say good-bye to your sex life.” (This always seems like a strange thing to say to anyone at any time.) Well, we didn’t say good-bye to it at all. In fact, ten months later, Jeannie got pregnant with our first son, Jack. Again, everyone was thrilled. There wasn’t a baby shower this time, but there was more advice from friends with two kids on how to deal. “You are
really
in for it now!” After two kids, a boy and a girl, you start hearing things like, “Well, now you’ve got one of each! Perfect!” To me the message was clear: “You guys should stop.”

When we found out we were having our third child, Katie, I felt we started losing the crowd. The congratulations were always preceded by a
wow
. “Wow … congratulations!” The one couple we knew with three kids gave us advice about dealing with three little ones. “Now you’re outnumbered!” Then came the fourth pregnancy, Michael, and everything changed. There was audible nervousness in our friends’ and families’ congratulations, which included multiple
wow
s. “Wow … congratulations … wow, wow!” In certain parts of the country, having four kids is not strange at all. In New York City, it is equivalent to having a thousand. I felt like friends started treating us like we were Amish and voluntarily living without electricity.
“Well, that’s one way to live your life. Hey, can you build me one of those wood fireplaces?” We were treated like pioneers. The couple we knew with three kids showed us a map of Utah. We were questioned as if we were curious oddities at a freak show. “What’s that like?” I explained what it was like having a fourth kid very simply: imagine you are drowning … and then someone hands you a baby.

In a strange way, four kids made us celebrities. At school pickups, I was no longer introduced as a comedian, I was “the father of four.” Strangely, there was some sympathy, too, as if something horrible just “happened” to me, like a tornado blowing the roof off of my house. I remember an unemployed father telling me to “hang in there.” Everyone knows that when someone shows you sympathy, you do the natural thing. You play into it for your own benefit. I started using the four kids as an excuse for everything. “Sorry I’m late … I have four kids.” “I know I’ve put on some weight, but I do have four kids.” “Sorry, I have four kids, I have four kids.”

While these births and subsequent reactions of friends and family were happening, we were living in a two-bedroom apartment roughly the size of an airplane bathroom. This was another source of entertainment for the peanut gallery. “Well, at least you thought it through.” We were constantly searching for another apartment in Manhattan that we could afford—and not just squeeze into for another year before we would have to start looking again. We were juggling schedules with kids at three different schools in three different parts of town. Jeannie was producing my third one-hour comedy special while nursing our eight-month-old Michael when we got a
big positive on a pregnancy test. If having four kids is drowning and someone hands you a baby, then the fifth kid is the same scenario but with a shark fin coming at you. How would I tell my friends and family that we just found out we were expecting a fifth? We had left the realm of normalcy. After Jeannie and I went to the scary ultrasound place (always a relaxing experience) and saw our fifth child, Patrick, I decided to just announce it on Twitter. I didn’t even want to process the wows of friends and family in person. I knew that to them we had become that disappointing friend on yet another trip to rehab. They weren’t even rooting for us anymore. We were the soldier volunteering for his fifth tour of Afghanistan. We were on our own. In their eyes, we had “jumped the shark.” All of a sudden, four kids seemed a lot more normal. We immediately started getting compared to people with absurd numbers of children. “My great-great-aunt had sixteen kids.” Well, tell her I said hi. “Are you trying to catch up with the Duggars?” Yes, we are. We only need fourteen more children and we will win!

When Jeannie and I brought our fifth child, Patrick, to his first doctor’s visit, we waited for an elevator with a mother and her three young kids. The mother proudly corralled the energetic ten-, seven-, and five-year-olds onto the elevator. When her five-year-old asked if Jeannie’s sling was holding a baby, the mother warned her kids to be careful and not to touch the newborn. Jeannie pulled down the side of the sling to reveal one-day-old Patrick. The nice kids swooned at seeing the tiny baby. The mother confidently asked, “Is this your first?” When Jeannie replied that it was our fifth, the mother’s demeanor changed. “Are you kidding me? Five? Really? FIVE?” Then
came the most popular reaction. The question that has become an integral part of our daily life: “Are you guys
done
yet?”

When Jeannie gave birth to Patrick, I was not surprised by the absence of congratulatory calls, flowers, and baby gifts. These steadily dropped off after the second child. We certainly didn’t need any more baby clothes at that point. Heck, after Jeannie gave birth to our fourth, Michael, I barely received an e-mail acknowledgment from most of my siblings. I get it. “Another baby from Jim and Jeannie.” It held the ceremony of renewing an annual health club membership. I understand. However, I
was
surprised how often so many people asked, “Are you guys done yet?” I’m always tempted to reply, “Why do you ask? Are you paying their college tuition?” I feel as if I’m under so much pressure to make the decision at that moment. “Are you done yet?” Like we are the last patrons in a restaurant at midnight, lingering over dessert, and the waiter has a train to catch. “Are you done yet? Anything else? Can I get those plates out of your way? Do you need the check? Can you get the hell out of here already?!”

I understand “Are you done yet?” seems like an innocent question. There is curiosity. If we have five children now, how far will we go? I’d be curious, too, but there is a lack of boundaries in the “Are you done yet?” line of questioning. Obviously this is a sensitive subject and not really anyone else’s business. People would never even ask a friend, let alone a stranger, when they plan to get their hair cut, for fear of offending, yet for some reason the “How many children are you going to have” question is fair game. This also goes for people without children. We are close with a couple who has struggled with
infertility for years, and I have witnessed strangers asking how long they’d been married immediately followed by “Why don’t you have any children?” Total disregard for what they might be going through. Why is this? I don’t mean to get up on a diaper box, but individual liberties are all-important in this country … except when it comes to the number of kids you have or don’t have.

Often I suspect “Are you done yet?” may mask a thinly veiled judgment against my having five children. Maybe some people think that Jeannie and I are being greedy by having five children, that there is a limited supply of babies, and we are exceeding our fair share. Maybe they think that we are inhibiting a woman’s right to choose and single-handedly attacking access to birth control. We all have heard the arguments against having “too many children.” What about the overpopulation problem? What about the starving children in Africa? What about your carbon footprint? I have over a hundred comedian friends who are not having children by choice. Maybe I’m having their children. I care about starvation in Africa, but I doubt the probability of our having one less child will somehow feed people. As for the carbon footprint, the seven people in my family live in a two-bedroom five-story walk-up apartment. Normally, you can’t walk three steps without running into someone. We don’t own a car or a pet farting cow. I can safely assume our carbon footprint is smaller than a lot of people’s. I’m not saying it’s smaller than
your
footprint, but then again, you did buy this book. Do you realize how many trees you killed? I’ve heard that for really good books like this, they use at least one tree per page. Don’t worry—since it is
this
book, I forgive you. And so do the trees. You have used your carbon footprint wisely. If you were going to destroy the environment, at least you did it for me. If this is an e-book version, please feel guilty about something else.