Gary V. Powell, Author

I've written a lot about my daughter Ashley and the challenges we experienced as she transitioned from teenager to young adult. For the time being, at least, Ashley seems to have found her footing. She's attending and doing well in beauty school in Omaha. We have high hopes that things will continue to work out for her.

I've not written as much about my six-year old son, Reilly. But, especially since Ashley left our Big Yellow House, Reilly has become the focus of attention. At age 56, I'm the father of a salty, rough and ready, stubborn, determined, creative, smart, sweet, little man. I doubt that it comes through in this blog, but the truth is that Reilly's light burns so bright that the writing, the cooking, the gardening, the boating, all take a second chair.

He is "up and at 'em" at the crack of dawn, often terrorizing the dog or the neighbor's cat, while I'm working on a story or blog entry on the screen porch. He's got Star Wars and Transformer paraphernalia in every pocket of his Surfer Dude shorts and a combat rifle over his shoulder. He's working The Mom for candy in his lunch box before he goes off to Y camp for the day. He could use a bath, needs to brush his teeth, and his shoes smell a little funky.

His language is as salty as a sailor's after a six-month tour at sea.

He's loud and rowdy and his knees and elbows look like they've been to war. He's capable of back talk, sass, and negotiation a corporate lawyer would be proud of. He thinks his mom is sexy and has told me on more than one occasion that he can kick my butt.

He likes to snuggle in the chair with me and watch The Deadliest Catch or Man versus Wild on the Discovery Channel. He'd rather be held and read to by his mom more than just about anything.

A lot of people thought I was crazy when I announced that Mary and I wanted a baby. To be honest, I thought it was a little crazy, too, at the outset. But I loved Mary and she wanted the experience of a baby and I wanted to give that to her. We tried the old-fashioned way for about four years before deciding to try some other things. It was a pretty good run.

We tried surgery on Gary. Guys, I don't want to do that again. Then we tried a variety of fertility enhancers on Mary. Eventually, we found our way into invitro fertilization. I don't especially want to try that again, either. It was costly, hard on both of us emotionally, and draining physically, due to the pharmaceutical regimen Mary was forced to follow.

Plus, the doctors didn't hold out much hope.

And then our first attempt failed.

The doctors offered us one last chance, a highly-experimental drug regime that they said probably had about a one in ten chance of working. Even if it did work, the risk of multiple births was high.

We felt like we had to give it a try for no other reason than even it didn't work out we could say we'd tried our damnedest and put it behind us.

A few weeks later, we had nine eggs. Using scientific techniques I don't quite understand, my sperm was injected into the eggs. Five became viable. I got my head around the possibility of triplets and prepared myself for twins. We implanted all five eggs given the 50/50 chance than not even one would take.

We lost two right away.

Then two days later only one was left.

That little guy became Reilly.

His light still burns very brightly.