Eight and None More

Anne,

This is a nice story of how my family, or at least some of us, were begat.  

My father and mother are devout Catholics, or, in my father's case, devout enough to convert religions (I think he is a reformed Protestant) so that he could marry the woman he has now shared a home and heart with for sixty-five years. You could say it was a match made in Heaven - because there was divine intervention.

Mom and dad never really decided how many children they wanted.  I don't believe they ever set down at the old kitchen table, with its two double leaflets and prodigious length, and said, "Let's stop when we get to eight." It just happened that way.  But not without the aforementioned assistance.  

The Pope to be exact.  Yes, El Papa saved my parents from nine (or maybe double digits of kids) and a bundle more of dirty diapers and late nights.  Eight really is enough.

After I made my appearance out of the womb, kicking and screaming probably to get back in, mom had had it with little pooping Dermers.  It was time for a new beginning, one that did not include any more brothers or sisters for me.  She just didn't have a proper plan.  

And sometimes accidents will happen, being as we are all human.  And that accident came in 1966.  Her name was Karen - Karen my little sister.

"Enough talk, enough Dermers!  We need solutions!  And fast, before another accident happens and yet another Dermer is begat."  I can hear my parents saying urgently to each other.

Hence was hatched plan, “Plead-Mercy-to-the-Pope.”  Mom and dad worked diligently on crafting the words that would be written on lined paper and promptly sent to Vatican City.  The wording had to be just-so, words that would melt a Pope's heart.  Words that would make him do what normally doctrine would have him refuse.  

The letter was sent with loving care.  I imagine mom and dad walking to the mailbox together, fingers crossed, carefully sliding the envelope in and raising the worn red flag.  Now, all they had to do was wait for a reply - and perhaps say a few "Hail Marys" and "Our Fathers."  A few more than their normal allotment, which was already substantial.  

One week.  Two weeks.  A month.  Two months.  Three months.  It was a case of good news, bad news:  there were no more buns yet in the oven, but the Pope was taking his sweet, divine time.  

And so it continued.  No kids, no reply.  

After months of waiting, mom and dad gave up on the expectation of receiving a reply.  Dad made the appointment and went to the hospital soon after.  The surgery went smoothly, with no complications, and my father came home a new man.   

Life returned to normal at the Dermer household.  The kids were growing up, some teenage monsters, some playing Barbies and GI Joes, another - me - having a real problem with wetting the bed.  Hey, why get up when mom will clean up?  That was my kid mantra.  

But no more Dermers were begat.  What had happened; what had been in that letter?

In that fifth, maybe sixth month of waiting, an executive decision was made by Parents Dermer.  The Pope had not replied and most likely would not, and Deloras and Charles felt that they had done their due diligence in following scripture, including "be fruitful and multiply."  

My parents sat down in the fall of 1966 and penned an entreaty to Pope Paul VI.  The words delicately and lovingly scrawled.  In it, my father asked if he might use the power of the scalpel to finish his days of increasing the earth's population.  Pope Paul VI never replied, which my parents took as tacit approval.

Charles, my lovely father, had his vasectomy with a great weight lifted from his heart.

And that is why we are eight and none more.