The Ark

Copyright © 2020 by VeryWellAged

What was and what will be...10

Author's note: These chapters are NOT stand-alones...The story starts here.

What was and what will be...11

Daddy, daddy, daddy.

I’m a father three times over now. In June, Cincer gave birth to Ira Edgar Santos Courtwright. Just now, Ann gave me my first daughter, Iris Rose Ramos Courtwright.

All three children are fine. Given my advanced age, I was concerned about the possibilities of birth defects, but so far I’ve been lucky or, actually, it’s the kids who are lucky.

Each, I’m told, has some of my features. Do I see it? No. Still, what the fuck do I know about infants?

But, the hits keep on coming. Reyna’s is due next month and Bim’s is due the month following that. And we now know that Eva is carrying. Her little one is due in December.

As it comes to the new place, we have gotten a lot done. We really only got started in a serious way last October. It’s August, 2006, now. All the pods are up with roofs on, with the glass walls in place. Everything is sealed from the elements.

On the outside, we are dealing with the louvers, the roll-down sections, railings and outfitting the dirty kitchen. Inside, we are working on plumbing, electrical, non-loadbearing walls for privacy in bathrooms and bedroom areas.

There are no loadbearing posts inside, but we need some posts to hide and contain electrical conduit and water pipes.

We have yet to hang the ceilings. We haven’t started on the solar panels or the wind turbines. We don’t need all that fully completed before we move in, but the Samelco II electric service we have is a minimal feed. It’s enough for construction but not for living here. I need to get our solar panels installed and working before we make the move. We have water, as the well is a good one, but it isn’t plumbed into the pods either, as that requires that the water tank on a pod roof be completed. It isn’t.

Maybe we will be able to move in by October. I surely hope so.

On a more mundane matter of housekeeping as it were, I don’t have a single gal in high school any more. My youngest, Reyna, has graduated and is sixteen. Eva is seventeen. My oldest, Cincer, is thirty, with Bim being two years younger at twenty-eight. I’m still sixty-seven, but my birthday is in two months.

Reyna has started her studies for a bachelors in Banking and Finance at Holy Infant College.

Lorie is still working. And that is weirdly a blessing, as she had been my shadow. That’s pretty much what Jessa is now. I’m not sure how that would have worked if they both were in that role.

Cincer has been convinced to return to work half-time, starting next month. I’m not sure how long that will actually last. Nelia has decided to stay home and not return to work. Ann’s work is a matter of self-employment. She has certainly cut back, but she will never simply quit.

Jessa is disappointed at not conceiving yet but, other than that, all is fine with her. She is a surrogate mommy to three babies, and that is making her very happy.

My days continue to be filled with matters of construction, and my evenings are filled with my gals. It has been a while since I was even able to get to MickeyD’s. I’m at the construction site each day, all day. It was a pleasant surprise when Jessa showed up here at the building site today with a bag of burger and fries from MickeyD’s. It’s not as good as getting it right at the restaurant, but it’s pretty good, as I can’t do that.

I haven’t even seen Debbie since Reyna graduated last March. Before that, I did see her at school events, but we have not spoken since that last time when I put her with the gals.

Everything is as stable as it can be, considering we are in the middle of a construction project and the house we are in is bursting at the seams with three infants added to the mix.

I’ve lost track of what’s going on back in the USA. It just doesn’t have anything to do with my life here, so I don’t even try to keep up with it.

Every once in a while, I’ll get an email from a friend back in the States and I, of course, answer it as vaguely as I can. That’s the sum of it. I really find it impossible to write back honestly. Considering what my life is like here, there’s no way I can respond honestly to, How are things going? What are you up to over there?

What am I supposed to say? How would one of those who reached out deal with it? Imagine if they read, I am finishing up the structures for my eight lovers, my three newborns, and the three more little ones on the way. There’s no way I can say anything like that.

So I send back answers that are meaningless and designed to discourage any follow up. All that was my life in the States is now, in a meaningful way, part of my past. It’s not connected to the life I have here.

Maybe you are one of those who keeps on going back to your high school reunions. But for the rest of us, high school was something we did and even the memory of it has faded. We no longer remember with whom we associated, or anything much about those days. It becomes the distant past.

And so it is for me, as I think about my life in the States. That was then and this is now.

Now is having lovers who are years away from their twentieth birthday. Now is seeing six females with either babes in arms, or truly with child. Now is worrying about being fair to each of my gals so that not a one of them feel slighted. Now is its own sort of nuts. And in a few days it’ll be the ber season again.

I’m now the father of another daughter, Reyna’s Michelle Arroyo Courtwright. I told Reyna I’ll call the girl Mac. All is well with Mac and, once again, I’m told that she has my features. I’m really beginning to think such claims a little bogus. Yes, I know the child is mine, but she looks pretty Filipino to me.

Bim’s due date is next week.

We are completely out of room! It’s a madhouse here.

And, at each birth, there’s a party. As each infant adds a month of life, there’s a party. At each birthday there’s a party. Do the fucking math! There were ten before the babies arrived. There are fifteen now but five of them will get a party each month on their moniversary. We are having parties every weekend! I’m trying to slow this shit down, as it’s getting out of control.

I know the gals are out of their collective minds with happiness over the births and the approaching move to our own place, but, really!... they need to cool it.

Next month, once again we are expecting to see Lillian. She visited once after I returned from the States and stayed for three days that time. This time she is planning on staying for a week. I sure as hell hope we can move first. There’s no way we have room for her here.

We have moved in, and I’m a father once again to a daughter! Bim has given me Elenora Arlene Cabreza Courtwright. The infant and mother are doing fine, as is Elenora’s older sister, Niana, who is now eight years old and taking the role of an Ate most seriously.

Lillian arrives tomorrow. Last time Lillian was here, there were all sorts of issues regarding the settling in with Jessa and Eva, plus the crap with Debbie had just occurred. I pretty well ignored Lillian. This time, things are in one way a lot calmer, but with all the infants, and issues surrounding our new home, it’s busy in other ways.

I’m trying to get a handle on our power generation and consumption. With the exception of storms, average wind speed is between six and ten miles per hour. But the best wind is early morning and late afternoon. Sunlight is pretty good, and gives me between eleven and thirteen hours of some sunlight, though early morning and late afternoon the sun isn’t that strong.

So when one source isn’t strong, the other usually is. But there are the evenings, when there’s little wind and, of course, no sunlight. I’m generating far more power during most of the day than I can use, but do not have a way to store it. Every night I’m using Samelco II power. I really need to rethink my position on the batteries. Even if I was OK using commercial power, the line we have doesn’t provide enough current. It would require a major upgrade of poles, line and a new transformer.

We designed the entire area below the roof of the carpark, as a place where I can place the batteries. The area has a floor of its own of open grating, well above the floor of the carpark. It will keep batteries out of the sun and off the ground in a way where there’s fresh air moving between the batteries on top, bottom and even sides, as they can be spaced apart a little. With enough space between them, I don’t think I’ll have an overheating problem.

The biggest users for energy in the evening are the aircons¹. Hot water is generated via solar hot water heaters on the roofs of the pods, one large one per roof. So we don’t use power for the hot water and, while the water is not steaming hot in the early morning, it’s far from cold, as the tanks are insulated.

Other energy users at night include a couple of large refrigerators, three coolers, five hot/cold water dispensers, the submersed water pump and three freezers, but in truth they don’t use too much current and, while we have perimeter lights outside, they also don’t use that much juice. Raising and lowering the ramps and the shutters do take a lot of energy.

There is no power needed for the water pump at night. The pump is run automatically twice during daylight hours. As the tank is large, the drawdown would have to be beyond our usage to turn it on by the depletion ‘float’ inside the tank. I have the pump on a timer the looks for a repletion ‘float’ before turning off. The times are at 7AM and 5PM.

If I could store our excess power we generate during the day, I doubt we would use any Samelco power on most nights. We surely don’t use them during the day now.

Even with under .5KW per micro-turbine on average per day, with the sixty we installed, we are getting on average over 27KW of power from 4AM through 7AM and then again 3PM to 7:30PM. The panels are giving us about double that from 9AM to 3:30PM. We are using less than 25KW during the day and under 8KW from 10PM to 5AM. If I can get decent storage, then I’ll never even be touching Samelco power.

I never contemplated being off-grid in the USA, but I never would have thought a Katrina-type catastrophe was possible there. Now I do, and this place doesn’t have any resources compared with the USA. Here, I need to take care of myself. That’s exactly what I’m doing.

As to Internet, I’ve purchased a wireless link from a company called Globe Telecom. They provide a little flat panel antenna and a receiver with a cellphone style SIM in it. I have to buy loads for it, but it’s 3G and it works. It isn’t the greatest signal or speed, but we are connected.

We don’t have a landline. Unless you are in Tacloban, no one I know here has one. Welcome to the third world.

Lillian is here. Yes, I paid for the airfare. Her sari-sari is being run by a niece of hers for the week. The last time she was here, we were in the rental and, while it was OK, it was hardly special. This place is special, and Lillian is being really weird.

Twice so far, she is saying she made a mistake not sticking with me. Both times I just ignored her, but Lorie hasn’t. I can’t ignore Lorie as I can Lillian.

No, Ri. No. I know your mother wants me to ask her to stay. But no. There are eight of you here as it is. Besides, she will soon enough want to go back because she misses it, or she will want to open a sari-sari here and, sweetheart, I don’t want that on this property. Anyway, the answer is no. She can visit once a year for one week each time, but that’s it.

Maybe you will change your mind if she is nice to you?

Sweetheart, she is being nice to me now. The answer is no.

Lillian isn’t hard to look at. She wasn’t before and nothing has changed in that regard. It’s that she carries with her complexities I don’t need and, in truth, I’m absolutely done adding.

For the entire week that Lillian is here, it never gets any easier. It’s not that it ever gets ugly. It’s just that she doesn’t want to go back to her own island, until, just like I guessed, she gets a call from her niece about a problem at the sari-sari. Then she can’t get back soon enough.

How you know?

Know what?

She not want to stay.

I didn’t, not for sure, but I remembered what she was like the last time and, well, I figured that sooner or later she would miss it. Granted, it happened faster than I assumed it would, but it was just a guess.

Good thing you not fuck her. Lorie is smiling.

Why?

If she pregnant, what then?

Oh. Yeh, got it.

It has taken another six months to get all the final parts and pieces finished here. And still there are future plans for changes and additions we will make. There needs to be, however, a point in time when you say, the job is done. And so it is with this place. There are five pods, but they make up a home. We are home.

I added an embarrassingly large number of lithium-ion batteries, and our storage problem is no more. While we have a hookup to Samelco, we aren’t using their power. We have our own water and septic. We are composting what we can, and burning/burying the rest.

Since we have lots of electricity, we use that for all our cooking, with the exception of when the gals want to grill with locally sourced charcoal. That makes us a little different from most here who use LP gas to cook.

Bim, Nelia and Jessa have a large vegetable garden, going and the expectation is that we will be at least growing some of our food. They also have what they call native chickens, which provide eggs, chicks, and a fairly tough but tasty meat that they use in soups.

I forgot to mention, four months ago Eva gave me a son named Charlie Beloy Courtwright, and Jessa’s with child. We can expect Jessa’s in October, and maybe within a week of my birthday. Nelia’s not showing yet, but she has missed two periods and is having morning sickness.

Jessa is elated and I’m happy for her. Lorie, on the other hand, is pretty depressed, as she isn’t with child. I’ve offered to send her to a doctor and she has agreed. She and I know that some women simply can’t have kids. Nelia has been staying pretty close to her and supporting her as best she can with her, ‘Jesus has a plan for you’ stuff. It wouldn’t work for me, but it actually may be working for Lorie.

Lorie’s trips to an OB/Gyn only tell us that there is nothing obvious causing a problem.

I’m not sure how to proceed, in sexual matters, with Lorie. Do I increase the times we are together? Might that seem like I’m being desperate, or suggesting that it’s important to me that she ‘take?’ And if she doesn’t, which is likely, might that suggest to her that she will fall out of favor?

Do I lie with her, as in the normal way of things, not changing the frequency of our times under the sheets? Might she think that she isn’t important enough for me to care if she gets pregnant or not?

I’m really lost. I don’t tell anyone this. Fuck if I know how to proceed.

When you going to talk to Ri?

What? About what?

Ira, you not stupid. If I know, you know.

There’s this thing about Jessa. She sort of is able to know my mind.

What should I do?

Tell her?

Tell her what, Jessa? What the fuck can I say?

Gah! Tell her you want her to decide, more or the same. Do she want you in bed more, knowing probably make no change, or the same, knowing that no matter what, you always love her, baby or no baby. That what. That what you think, so ask her.

Jesus Jessa, you are both wrong and right. Yes, I was worried which way would be best, but no, I’ve not put it together like you did. Do you think she will be OK if I ask her?

Why not. You respectful to ask. You tell her you love her no matter what. You know she want a child, but that up to God, not you. She know that.

You tell me how you want to proceed, Ri. You know I would be happy if you give me a child, but I’ll never love you less if we are not able to do that. I’m your guy.

It not ‘we’ who unable. It me! Ira, you think I am stupid? It me. I fail you.

You can’t fail me. That is not possible. I love you and that has nothing to do with children.

But I want you to have a child from my blood! Mine, Ira!

I know and you know the doctor say maybe and maybe not. Ri, don’t make our love based on whether you can have a child.

Maybe I not able, but Nanay, she is.

Ri? What are you saying?

If Nay² have your child, it my blood.

Oh, Ri, that is not a good idea for many reasons.

Please, if I not able? You think maybe we do this?

I don’t want to think about this. Have you already spoken with your mother?

Yes, she say OK for her.

Ri, she doesn’t really want to live here and I can’t see her having a child and just walking away. This is not a good idea.

Nelia say she not allowed to stay because we only come in pairs. Maybe she come with another?

Ri! No! No more. No more anything. We are done adding.

We need to add or I need to have your child, so I think… extra time in your bed. If that not work then we should add Nay and another so Nelia get her pair!

Are you even sort of aware how crazy this is, Ri? You are already the Tita³ to six of my children. There’s no shortage of kids in this house. Those kids love you as much as their birthmothers. You’ve been part of their world from the time each opened their eyes. You’re a mother to each. Why can’t that be enough if you are truly unable to have your own? I’ll never love you less. Never.

Not the same.

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What was and what will be...12