No Biking in the House Without a Helmet

Dispatches from the new front lines of parenthoodWhen the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home the news threatened to place her she writes among the greats the Kennedys the McCaughey septuplets the von Trapp family singers and perhaps even Mrs Feodor Vassilyev who according to the Guinness Book of World Records gave birth to sixty-nine children in eighteenth-century RussiaGreene is best known for her books on the civil rights movement and the African HIVAIDS pandemic Shes been praised for her historians urge for accuracy her sociologists sense of social nuance and her writerly passion for the beauty of languageBut Melissa and her husband have also pursued a more private vocation parenthood We so loved raising our four children by birth we didnt want to stop When the clock started to run down on the home team we brought in ringersWhen the number of children hit nine Greene took a break from reporting She trained her journalists eye upon events at home Fisseha was riding a bike down the basement stairs out on the porch a squirrel was sitting on Jesses head vulgar posters had erupted on bedroom walls the insult niftam the Amharic word for snot had led to fistfights and four non-native-English-speaking teenage boys were researching on Moms computer the subject of saxingAt first I thought one of our trombone players was considering a change of instrument writes Greene Then I remembered they cant spellUsing the tools of her trade she uncovered the true subject of the saxing investigation inspiring the chapter Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Couldnt SpellA celebration of parenthood an ingathering of children through birth and out of loss and bereavement a relishing of moments hilarious and enlightening--No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a loving portrait of a unique twenty first-century family as it wobbles between disaster and joy.