Mr. Eugenides: koder: For Michael Reinhart, a 52-year-old truck driver, and his wife, Carolyn, a 54-year-old training manager at McDonald's, voting this year is about their 11 grandchildren and getting schools opened back up.
Michael: "If it took all day, I would wait to make sure my vote got counted."

Specifically, they're in favor of getting the schools opened, right now, at the start of the second wave. They're voting, so you'd better too.

How do you have eleven grandchildren at 54?

At 36, my best friend in the Navy married a woman 8 years his senior. She'd a son 8 years younger than her new husband (she had her son when she was 16). Her son had two daughters and a step-daughter from his wife's first marriage (the son's wife's daughter was 17). By the time my friend was ready to retire from the Navy at 40, his step-son's step-daughter gave him a double-step-great-grandson.

Irony: my friend is gay & it was a marriage of convenience because, since it was then illegal for a gay man to serve his country, he needed a beard and married the mother of another friend, a shipmate of ours, & she needed to finish her degree & medical care. Additionally, his wife had 3 additional daughters, all mothers, so he had a total of four step-children, 9 step-grandchildren & 1 double-step granddaughter, and 1 something-step (triple or double, I dunno) great-grandchild.

This was in 1992. They never divorced, she passed away from lung cancer (2010) and he married his husband in 2012 with his kids, grandkids & great-grandchild by his first marriage there. They live in his late wife's house, a 3 flat, with two of his step-daughter in the other flats.

On the first date, talking about themselves, he told future husband he thought the date was going really well & he invited him to come back to his house for the night, "but my grandson & his wife & sons are camping in the guest room for a few days while their apartment is being repaired because of water damage." His date stopped, looked at him while he put that sentence together and asked, "Wait. What? You have great-grandchildren? How the fark old are you?"  (Answer: 55.) God bless 'em, that family works.

What I find most amazing is: his youngest step-daughter's ex-husband, after the divorce, stayed in the spare room and never left so he could still help care for his two kids, living in his ex-stepmother's apartment (since her gay husband mostly lived elsewhere and obviously it was not a traditional marriage). When his ex-step-mother died, and gay husband inherited the house, he stayed on and has never moved out.

In the dining room they have a family tree of photos on the wall. It's a beautiful wall.

Lurk Who's Talking: Mr. Eugenides: koder: For Michael Reinhart, a 52-year-old truck driver, and his wife, Carolyn, a 54-year-old training manager at McDonald's, voting this year is about their 11 grandchildren and getting schools opened back up.
Michael: "If it took all day, I would wait to make sure my vote got counted."

Specifically, they're in favor of getting the schools opened, right now, at the start of the second wave. They're voting, so you'd better too.

How do you have eleven grandchildren at 54?

At 36, my best friend in the Navy married a woman 8 years his senior. She'd a son 8 years younger than her new husband (she had her son when she was 16). Her son had two daughters and a step-daughter from his wife's first marriage (the son's wife's daughter was 17). By the time my friend was ready to retire from the Navy at 40, his step-son's step-daughter gave him a double-step-great-grandson.

Irony: my friend is gay & it was a marriage of convenience because, since it was then illegal for a gay man to serve his country, he needed a beard and married the mother of another friend, a shipmate of ours, & she needed to finish her degree & medical care. Additionally, his wife had 3 additional daughters, all mothers, so he had a total of four step-children, 9 step-grandchildren & 1 double-step granddaughter, and 1 something-step (triple or double, I dunno) great-grandchild.

This was in 1992. They never divorced, she passed away from lung cancer (2010) and he married his husband in 2012 with his kids, grandkids & great-grandchild by his first marriage there. They live in his late wife's house, a 3 flat, with two of his step-daughter in the other flats.

On the first date, talking about themselves, he told future husband he thought the date was going really well & he invited him to come back to his house for the night, "but my grandson & his wife & sons are camping in the guest room for a few days while their apartment is being repaired because of water damage." His date stopped, looked at him while he put that sentence together and asked, "Wait. What? You have great-grandchildren? How the fark old are you?"  (Answer: 55.) God bless 'em, that family works.

What I find most amazing is: his youngest step-daughter's ex-husband, after the divorce, stayed in the spare room and never left so he could still help care for his two kids, living in his ex-stepmother's apartment (since her gay husband mostly lived elsewhere and obviously it was not a traditional marriage). When his ex-step-mother died, and gay husband inherited the house, he stayed on and has never moved out.

In the dining room they have a family tree of photos on the wall. It's a beautiful wall.

Btw: the 16 year old girl who had a child that started it? She was in an LDS sect in New Mexico. When she was 26, he husband beat her in the front yard so savagely she lost 7 teeth. Somehow she & her four kids escaped to a West Coast town when she worked, raised her kids, got her GED, went to college ( thanks to her gay marriage of convenience husband), and earned a master's and a teaching certificate, bought a house, and made her family safe.