Back when I was in college a friend and I decided to room together and we rented a small house about three blocks from campus. Next door was a family with lots of kids. There were two women there and the man who worked for the Electric Utility. The women were in their late twenties and both were pregnant. It was my first exposure to communal living. We became friends, and there were lots of kids to look after and my roommate and I spent a lot of time helping. Money was tight for them and there was always home cooking. Lots of spaghetti and meat loaf and other good things. We ate with them three or four times a week. As college kids those were our home cooked meals. You don't think you like kids but you do. Especially the three and four year olds, they were infatuated with us and we were just as infatuated with them.

When their babies came we tried to be useful and we helped keep the house going doing laundry for them and cooking ourselves. I knew how to make chicken casserole and my roommate was good with dishing out hot dogs and hamburgers. We worked together and the arrival of the new babies went well for everyone. We joined their family in pretty much every way. When we graduated and we had to face leaving school it was a very hard break up. We had become very attached to the kids and to the ladies. Little did we know that they would be the biggest influence in our lives.

Three years out of college I got a job offer in Hawaii. I just couldn't resist and asked my college roommate to come with me, lets go live in Hawaii. In Hawaii we met a man in our building who was single and retired from the Navy and had a specialty photography business. For a Navy man it was hard for us to accept that he wasn't chasing us, we were so available to him. We started to be affectionate, lots of hugging and holding and kissing his cheeks. We agreed that we would offer him us.

We told him we were looking for a man who would have us. We were self supporting but we were without a husband. We told him about our college days and our neighbors and that we still kept in touch. Since then we had talked about it at length and that is the life we wanted, a communal set up where we could live together with a man and have several kids, well lots of kids.

The topic stood there for a long time. We took over and took care of him. He didn't want it, he was very self sufficient, but we were determined. We started by cooking for him, every night when he came home from work there was a hot meal and a table set for him. His laundry and cleaning all happened when he was at work. We gave him loads of affection. He was very concerned about getting involved with a couple of crazy girls who wanted nothing more than to procreate. One night we pulled him into the bedroom and we treated him at the same time, we followed instructions from our college neighbors, never let him sleep alone and have one room. After several months of this he agreed in spoken word that we could all live together.

He had some savings and between his savings and our little money we looked for a house and bought it. We went the common law route, naming ourselves with his name, having joint checking accounts, owning a house together and of course having loads of kids, we have nine now. Our dear reluctant husband is overwhelmed with his kids, he is fully retired now and is a devoted father. We both work full time, we have decent jobs and his pension but money is always tight, getting a family of twelve around requires two large vans. To many of our neighbors we are just 'sisters' who did not want to be separated.

We bunk up, the boys in one room and the girls in the other room. And the mommies sleep with the daddy. The one lesson our college neighbors repeated to us, beat into us, there is no separate pillow talk, there is no separate sex, there is no jealousy.