More older parents in the news

This time, we've got an Associated Press story on a 60-year-old New Jersey woman who delivered twins, apparently the oldest woman in America to do so. She and her husband have been married 38 years. Hard to imagine still changing diapers during your 40th wedding anniversary. Des and I haven't even reached our 10th yet.

The mother of the twins is reported to have said that she didn't want her 6-year-old to be an only child. It's a poorly held family secret that my brother, Scott - a year older than me - was an accident for my parents, who were by then hitting 40 and already had three older kids. I was planned for the same reason that this mother said - so that Scott would not be an only child. As it turned out, we were not very close as children, although I idolized him, listened to all the music he listened to and wanted to do everything he did. Some of those things carried over to adulthood - he was the first to tell me about ACC basketball, which I have followed rabidly ever since. (although I switched from being a Tar Heel fan to Wake Forest when I went to college.) We got much closer as we got older - he even officially married my wife and me, while he was a magistrate. Now I can see what our parents had in mind - he's a great friend to have around and understands better where I came from than anyone else.