What I Learned About Life By Welcoming My 22 Kids and Grandkids Into This World

When his daughter calls to announce grandchild number fifteen, a grandfather is catapulted back in time through a half-century of delivery-room drama.

Illustrations by Vinnie Neuberg

January 2010: I’m alone in the living room, CNN muted, shameless politicians flickering across the screen, a sweating glass of Jim Beam in my hand, and the most depressing Leonard Cohen song ever composed – “Sisters of Mercy” – playing in my head. With each passing moment I sink deeper into the couch, glassy eyed, worrying about one kid and then another and then another until I am sure all seven are doomed, and then I start obsessing about work, unpaid property taxes, my wife coughing upstairs through a rib-breaking pneumonia...when my daughter Addie phones to say she’s in labor. Her fourth. Our fifteenth grandchild.