“Four!”

At age twenty my wife said to me,

“four!”

“Four?”

At age twenty-two I questioned,

“four?”

“I want four before I’m thirty,”

my wife said.

“Four before you’re thirty,”

I questioned never thinking this would be,

never imagining the words she spoke

were words she meant.

But...

One, a boy,

then two, a girl.

Then...

“Yes,” she said,

“let’s shoot for three!”

Like most,

money a problem

and one a boy and one a girl

seemed to me a perfect family.

However...

“Hey, baby,” my wife said,

“let’s shoot for three.”

“Really,” I asked,

and,

“really,” she said.

Well, so I thought,

how much more could

one more little mouth eat?

Besides,

for me,

it was always so much fun trying.

Then...

the months passed quickly

and lo there came another boy.

Then...

Looking about the table,

“you know,” my wife said to me,

“things look kind of lopsided.”

Fearfully knowing what she meant,

“lopsided,” I stupidly asked.

“Yeah,”

my wife said to me,

“you know,

two boys and one girl!

Seems to me," 

my wife said to me,

"we ought to shoot for four.”

                      ***

To place this family saga in time:

While in the waiting room,

reading a paperback entitled,

“Poker by Maverick.”

When the doctor came into the room,

looking up,

“well, Doc?” I asked.

“A girl,” said he.

And me,

hardly a great poker player,

replied,

“this, then, I guess,

is the first time two pair beats three of a kind.”