Invincible - Part 2

I have historically not been much of a joiner.

Oh, I have my pet organizations that I belong to. But after having been invited into a couple of prolonged bad experiences, I've gotten a little picky about the ones I choose.

So I'll admit that I was a little leery about going to a convention for families of triplets. First things first: the only practical way to get to the convention was to fly. Just thinking about that nearly gave me an ulcer.

And then there's the whole business of sitting in a hotel ballroom with people you don't know, talking about subjects that are either too vapid to merit attention, or too personal to talk about with this group of strangers.

And then there's the banquets and parties and kids' games and small talk.

So I try to be a little careful. But my wife has been a religious reviewer and participant on tripletconnection.com, a web site that has provided her with tremendous amounts of great advice from parents who have already lived the life we are just now experiencing. They helped her through the pregnancy, through the early days and sleepless nights, and still through the transition from crawling to walking, and from formula to solid foods.

Even as devoted as she has become, we still probably wouldn't have gone. Except that the TripletConnection convention organizers were looking for workshop facilitators. I've done some of that, and I thought it might be fun to run the workshop for fathers of triplets - forgotten as we often are in the whole multiples discussion (unless you're Jon, in which case you and Kate have generated enough multiples media attention for a decade).

I offered to do it, and the gracious Susan Holloway took me up on the offer. And with that, we were off to California.

I've read about the connections that people forge in difficult times, and through shared circumstances. Maybe in the way that two combat veterans need no introduction or small talk - they can simply plunge into a conversation as though they've known each other their whole lives.

So it is with parents of multiples. We met the first family at the convention while standing in the lobby waiting for an elevator. They are quads from Ohio, in their early 20s, and they are the most remarkable young people. Our elevator came and went while we talked with them.

And before we could catch the next elevator, we met a couple from California whose triplets are five months old. Leave aside for the moment that the father reminded me very much of an old baseball buddy of mine. What surprised me is that when he began talking about the last five months of his life, I knew right where he was. I've been in those shoes.

That night I had the opportunity to tell a little bit of our story, a speaking opportunity that normally requires a lot of background and explanation. Not every audience understands what you mean when you say you had to build a fence in your family room to trap the triplets. At this convention, they just smiled at each other and recalled their own fences.

The next day I facilitated the Super Dads workshop - a candid exchange for men only. An opportunity, I hoped, for men to talk about the challenges they face, and to share some of the solutions we've developed. Our 90 minutes passed in a blink, and I think we could easily have stayed another 90 minutes. Our discussion was entertaining, our solutions were enlightening, and our issues were deeply personal and universal.

A great group of men, who are doing an outstanding job of dealing with the difficulties - and enjoying the blessings - of having triplets. I am grateful that they let me share some small portion of their lives.

I'm glad my wife convinced me to call about facilitating the workshop. We met so many wonderful people, from California and Ohio and Washington and England. And we made connections so effortlessly. One triplet dad we met had no issue with just taking one of our boys out of the stroller and playing with him. The family from England took Luke during breakfast and played with him for the better part of an hour.

And we let them. It felt a little odd to be so comfortable with a group of strangers.

In some ways, they aren't strangers at all. Maybe we are combat veterans of a sort.

And we are clearly more alike than we are different.