In 2034, we started entertaining guests who contacted us because they shared our belief in egalitarianism. If I recall correctly, on six evenings we hosted households that described themselves as egalitarian. Overgeneralizing is not a good idea, but these folks seemed to fall into a few categories. Some people found their ideal spouse in the marketplace. While they made charming dinner guests, the obvious question is, “Why not sign the paper so your spouse can be free?” There seemed to be two answers, “I do not believe in divorce” or “I would be disinherited if I did that.”
The second group of couples had a similar motive, which was to avoid being widely recognized as being gay. This was the case for Connie, Faith's college roommate. While Connie was open with her parents, it was clear that Connie's true relationship was hidden from her parents' relatives and friends. Connie did not espouse egalitarianism. But we did entertain others who did. Nonetheless, the prospect of a wealthy person, capable of purchasing another, using slavery to hide their sexual orientation, did not strike us as noble.
There was one brother and sister pair that used some family money to free a group of childhood friends. Strangely, they did not bring any of these old friends with them, saying that, “They did not have the best table manners.” I got the impression that they called on their friends all the time to do errands for them. To me, the emancipation was fairly theoretical.
All of these folks were intensely curious about our complicated relationship. Ruth and Faith did a good job of explaining how our business plans required a mirror-image double coupling. This was bewildering to our various guests. In my opinion, our guests were spending more energy on espousing egalitarianism than they were on achieving it. We were forming a business partnership that needed to last decades. We concluded that the only way to keep the business partnership functional was to build a relationship based on actual equality. In other words, we were behaving as non-conformists to make a buck, not to purify our souls. All of this must have been too much for them to handle. I am fairly certain that our various dinner guests on various nights all left our house shaking their heads, full of discussion points as to why we were not approaching this difficult social problem properly. At each of these dinners, Faith picked a random time to say, “It is time to flip the coins to see who sleeps with whom tonight.” The guests who figured out she was just teasing turned out to be terrific long-term friends.
In our discussions, we knew that we were not trying to score points on some social purity scale. It was our daily job to make sure that we were all functioning properly, without resentment or “issues” that can build up when people live together. We all observed each other carefully and found pleasant ways to keep the group mood as positive as possible.
With three children on the way, we decided to line up a midwife. We asked around and located Ann Kopps as someone in our neighborhood. At a preliminary meeting, she told us that she was looking for a place to live. Ruth said, “You can live in our house until the kids are born. Perhaps we can work out another deal once the babies are born. Having you in the house would be amazing.”
We did have a series of short-term renters in our house. This was the first time we had a renter in our house that was there to help us directly. Ann's situation was more serious than we thought. She had virtually no money in her account and needed to have meals with us just to survive. I wondered how she found new clients, but she was very private about her own business affairs. I eventually learned that a very wealthy woman had blamed her last year for a less than optimal pregnancy outcome. She had no idea how to overcome the bad reputation that became associated with her name. I decided to withhold helping Ann with her reputation problem until the kids were born without incident.
On May 15, 2034, Faith gave birth to a son, Samuel Ben Ritter. We all liked Sam; it was a name well used by Americans of all ethnic groupings (there are many Chinese men named Sam). The middle name Ben was, of course, for Faith's father. I got to add the last name, so everyone gave a piece of the name. Faith was in labor for just under six hours, and all went well. My trust in our midwife soared. We were all very happy. By giving birth, Faith had set the date of our partner's freedom to be May 15, 2055 (which is 21 years after the birth of the first child born to our combined household). Faith told me was that she was delighted that it was her child and not Ruth's that had set the freedom date.
I would like to mention that on May 20, 2034, Jane Foreman was born in Ohio. I did not know anyone who knew her, but at some point, my story intersects with her story. She was born five days after the birth of my first child.
The next six weeks were amazing. Ruth just barely finished the school year and then retreated to bed rest at home. Quincy and I were doing our best to support Faith, Sam, and Ruth. If I said we had never worked this hard in our lives, all the women in my life would say, “For once you admit that household work is hard and exhausting.” Instead of falling into that trap, I will just say that there is a tipping point when the number of caregivers is outnumbered by the number of people needing assistance.
During this time, the most amazing thing happened. There was a knock on the door. It was my sister Jennie. The short version of her story is that she married, and her husband tried to seize all her assets. She was able to get a divorce. Between the jerk and the divorce, she had very little left. Another man became part of her life and stripped her of her remaining assets. She had no house, no bank account, and very little else. She had two suitcases and some personal items stashed at the houses of friends.
She cried and cried when I mentioned what she had done to our life plans. She said, “I am very sorry. You will never forgive me.” I told her that just saying that she recognized what had happened was 95% of all I wanted to hear. I shared with her what had happened in our lives. Readers can review the last four chapters. Since the book had not been written yet, there was a lot to tell her. We did a lot of talking while changing diapers, doing laundry, and cooking food with Quincy and me. I cannot tell you how much we appreciated the help.
The most important conversation I had was to explain how I thought that a criminal syndicate had targeted our parents and Jennie. I said, “I am going to guess that this lawyer showed up out of nowhere telling you that I was cheating you, and your only hope of getting anything at all was to sign some papers.” She nodded and asked how I knew. I laid out the whole story. She said, “I have been very stupid. I have wrecked everything. I should have slammed down the phone on that so-called lawyer.” I said, “We are all in a good place. We all have a home. We have a dream. If you had refused the lawyer, the gang might have killed both of us. We cannot undo the past. Do not do anything dramatic. Stay in our house. Help us the best you can. We will assist you in finding your own place. You were forced into a situation in which you could not turn to anyone else when you got in trouble. Things are different now. As long as you can carry your own weight, we will make sure that you are part of a very large community that wants you to find a fulfilling place in this world. Who knows, that place might be this house. Or it might be thousands of miles from here.”
Jennie was still very emotional. She said, “This house is like a dream. It seems to be twice as large as our childhood home. You are living with your business partners. You are well on the way to having three babies here. You must have spent a fortune on the house and the ‘pre-paid labor.’” Ruth interrupted, saying, “Honey, just use the correct words. Your brother bought our asses. He just got a terrific bargain.” Jennie continued, “It sounds like you still have a lot of money in the bank. Somehow I got wiped out in a year. I must be the biggest fool ever.” I answered, “Ruth is right. The labor purchase and the house purchase were bargains. All of us have full-time jobs. We are training Ruth and Quincy to move from being school teachers to being computer programmers. We are all doing our best under our circumstances. I have to deal with the fact that Faith has a much larger salary than I do. That rubs me the wrong way sometimes, but I have learned to joke about it, and not be upset about how my own job can be deeply frustrating. In two years, I probably will be in a better job situation. In two years, you will probably be in a much better situation.”
Jennie did have a remarkable transformation. Her Goth associates had endlessly told her that Chris was really evil. The daily tasks of caregiving completely changed her from a glum kid into a bright, optimistic young woman, eager to get a better start into her adult life.
As Jennie and I were bonding, Ruth came closer to her due date. On July 2, she gave birth to Julie Grace Lo and Raymond Xu Lo. The circumstances of the births were fairly complicated. Ann was a champion and used her skill and knowledge to make sure everything was in the right position. Julie was born two and a half hours before her brother. Ruth told her children, “I do not care what your ID cards say. You will never feel the yoke of slavery. You will be free legally before your 21st birthday. You will both make your family proud.”
The reality of dealing with three babies was hard to describe. The endless laundry, feeding, sleeping, dressing, bathing, diapering, and fussing took their toll. Jennie was a lifesaver in keeping things functional in those difficult first months with the small babies. Faith had only eight weeks of time off from her work. Thus, the bulk of childcare fell on Ruth, since the twins were her babies; and on Jennie, since she was around so much. For all of our talk of egalitarianism, it seemed so unfair that so much primary childcare fell on Ruth.
In October 2034, Quincy was able to obtain flexible employment as a computer programmer for one-and-a-third full-time positions for himself and Ruth at an unusual investment company. Together, they would earn $24,000 per year. Quincy and Ruth were making slightly more money than they did in their last year of teaching. We all pitched in so that Ruth was able to carve out a small number of hours for her new job. This was tricky since a computer programmer needs to learn their basic job as quickly as possible. I remember spending long hours in the afternoon, evening, and morning helping Ruth with the kids and discussing her assignments for her work. Ruth was embarrassed that I would be helping her so much. She would say, “Mr. Ritter, this is my work.” I would always say, “Our core mission is to keep our jobs and to take care of our kids, our house, and each other. If you do not know why I am assisting you, perhaps you should reflect on our mission statement.” Ruth asked, “Are you reprimanding me?” I just laughed and said, “I do believe that would be quite impossible.”
Our Friday night dinners mostly went on as before. If the babies were sick or on a bad sleep schedule, we just gave up. The special meals were for the benefit of the adults. If the adults were not able to function, the meal was off. We all decided that having a special meal on Saturday was not the same thing. If we missed a Friday, we just tried harder the next Friday. Bit by bit we made new traditions that were functional with all of the kids. We decided to take a neighborhood walk with the kids on the full moon. When people asked us what we were doing, we would explain, “It is a full moon night. As much as possible we bring our kids out to see the full moon.” We knew the origin of the word “lunacy” and figured that our neighbors must think we were in some sort of moon cult.
As expected, the twins were more difficult than just two kids. Raymond became physically intimidating, and Julie became an expert at psychological warfare. Poor Sam hardly had a chance. Yes, he was six weeks older than the twins, but as the months went by, that advantage slipped away from him.
One morning, Sam was in the kitchen with Jennie. He opened a cabinet and tried to pull out a small ring of aluminum. It was stuck, so he pulled very hard. It was hooked on a bit of cast iron. With one mighty toddler yank, he pulled everything from the cabinet, and a small, heavy frying pan hit his foot. There was blood everywhere. Jennie wrapped Sam's foot in a towel, picked him up, and ran upstairs to find another adult. She burst open the main bedroom door to discover Faith and Ruth making love. They quickly put on robes and tended to Sam. While everyone tried to distract Sam, Ruth sewed three stitches to close the wound.
Jennie wanted to make sure I knew what had been going on in the master (or is it the master/slave) bedroom. I just asked if they were both enjoying themselves. I said, “That is all that matters.” I know the open display of hedonism probably bothered Jennie. But she was glad that she was not the bearer of news that ended a relationship. I had other issues. I was amazed that Ruth knew how to sew up a wound. I asked her again and again how she learned how to do this. It turned out that she was a good shot, could fix a car, and could talk a banker into doing what he or she should never do. I decided that there were a lot of skills that I wanted to learn and I wanted my children to learn. I started to collect books that dealt with emergency situations. Over the years, we had a lot of fun discussing every emergency you could imagine.
At each birth, there was a little game we all played. In our household, we had two dads. One dad was Chinese, and one dad was half-Chinese, half-white. So the presence or absence of a tiny flicker of “whiteness” in a baby might be significant in a DNA kind of way.
In March of 2036, Faith realized she was pregnant. Ruth realized she was pregnant in September. Faith had a girl named Mary Jean on October 27, 2036. Mary looked more Chinese than Sam. Nobody asked for a DNA test. We had the first child of Faith and Quincy. We completed the package deal when Ruth gave birth to Bobbie Jo on May 17, 2037. She had just a dab of Caucasian facial features not found in Ruth or Quincy.
Our second crop of kids was the crossover kids (or crossover girls). We decided to give them the last name of Ritter-Lo. They came to be intensely linked to each other, closer than the twins. They were bright, outgoing, funny girls, who were very sure of themselves. They did everything together. They did not share a drop of DNA. Perhaps at some level, they knew their very existence was the stuff of scandal.
Quincy and I did the bulk of the early childcare for the crossover kids. Our wives laughed a lot and implied that it was our “exploration” that made them possible. This choice made sense considering our careers. Faith, as usual, had her high-paying job. I quit my job, to devote some time to the kids, Quincy was working half-time, and Ruth was up to full-time. With only two and a half jobs, we were up to $115,000 a year. It was true that Faith was responsible for $70,000 of it. She was doing so well at managing a squad of programmers; it was scary. The bank she worked for adored her. I was proud of the progress our partners had been making in their careers. It was just me that had a somewhat checkered job history. But our household was as stable as ever with four adults and five bright kids.
In June 2039, Faith had a miscarriage. It was such a sad moment. Faith had a very difficult time. A few weeks later, she said, “I think I am done with reproduction. I do not think we should have a sixth child.” We all started using various forms of birth control after that.