Women were all I knew of family. Family meant a household with my mother and three sisters so much older that they loved me without rivalry. Rivalry they reserved for each other. Other boys had fathers who took them hunting. Hunting was, for me, a mystery of guns and blood. Blood mysteries in our house were different.

Different boys came courting my sisters, giving me quarters to go away. Away is where they took my sisters, eventually. Eventually, it was just the two of us, me and my mother in a house I tried to fill with a loud guitar and an old Mustang that spent most of its time on the garage floor in parts. Parts were the vehicle of my initiation, for when my friends were with me we could speak the code of cams and carburetors and go to a country that we imagined was for men alone.

Alone and on my own at last, I found further paths into the world of men. Men working with me at the garage went for beers after work, bowled weekends, hunted in October, all to be away from their wives. Wives and children, they joked, were God’s punishment for youth. Youth, they urged me, was meant for raising hell.

Hell raising, according to my workmates, was a matter of drinking hard and of spending Saturday nights with girls whose names a man would forget by the time he told the story Monday. Monday mornings didn’t find me bragging of such exploits, though. Though I went for beers and bowled sometimes and even learned to hunt, I disappointed my adopted brothers. Brothers shouldn’t speak with their brothers’ wives with quite the ease that I did. Did they think that noticing a different hair style or knowing where to find the shoes to match that handbag was flirting? Flirting was what they called it to my face, though behind my back, they muttered other things. Things at work have improved only slightly since I met and married Bonnie.

Bonnie hoped our first would be a boy, so I haven’t shared with her my relief that we’re having a girl. Girl one, I hope, of two or three to come. Come to me, my daughters, and bring me home to the house of women.