The Pleasures of Unplanned Parenthood

My wife, Evann, and I met at an advertising agency in New Orleans, where I worked as a copywriter and she as a graphic artist. We were married at St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter on October 18, 1986, but established our first home together just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where I had secured employment as an editor of a news magazine and Evann landed a job as art director at a Bay State advertising agency. Our first daughter, Maria, was born in Boston the following year. In the meantime, the firm Evann worked for on Boylston Street had gone out of business and she decided to become a full-time mother, though continuing to accept free-lance design work when possible.

Evann has homeschooled our five children from the beginning, and we're both delighted by the unconstraint of their curiosity, the individuality of their intelligence, and the sincerity of their sympathy for each other. Maria, Ida, and Isabel are just finishing seventh, fourth, and second grades, respectively, and four-year-old Maxine has mastered the alphabet and her numbers 1 to 20. Crozet, our 18-month-old toddler, has learned a great deal just by watching and mimicking his big sisters at their studies. All of the kids love to draw, and they fly through the reams of scrap paper that I bring home from the office.