When I was 12. I had a little journal. In the back of that journal I drew a picture of my future family. That picture included a husband with brown hair and 10 children. The oldest was a girl and there were two sets of twins and I named them all.
Later as a teen, I dropped the idea of 10 kids, but it was still a part of who I was in the background.
At the age of 19 I had a dream about a little girl. I really wanted that little girl. I really wanted to marry and to have kids. I didn't think it would ever happen. My generation thought big families were a mistake. My parents thought I needed to get a good education and work for my life. I was sad thinking that I could not have the baby girl that entered my dreams.
Just before my 21st birthday, I met John at a labor day picnic for the singles ward in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We started to talk right away, and we did not stop. We spent the whole picnic and later at an ultimate frisbee game talking. I had bought a car a few months earlier and John did not have a way to buy some needful things for his apartment such as shower curtains and shampoo. I offered to take him and gave him my phone number.
A couple of days later, John called to make good on my promise. The next day, I picked him up and we went out together for the first time.
John wanted to stop for dinner. I agreed and we went to Boston Market. I remember very clearly sitting across from him and talking and talking. He was just easy to talk to, or we just talked easily together. At one point in the conversation, I told him how I wanted a big family. I even said that I wanted 10 children. Later, I wondered what possessed me to say those things to a stranger. But, apparently, they were not the wrong things to say in John's eyes. He thought there was something good about a girl that wanted to have children and even as many children as 10.
