WHEN I WAS 17, it was a very good year. It was the year I graduated high school. I had a steady girlfriend and a hundred dollar car. When I was 21, it was a very good year. It was the year Sara and I married and the year our son Danny was born. I was a senior at Temple University and we were so broke we traded down from a one-bedroom apartment in Center City for $125 a month to a one-bedroom apartment in Manayunk for $85 a month. Our first Christmas tree was free because we found it on Dec. 26. We had no idea, any of us, about what it meant to be a parent or a baby. But we made it work somehow.

When I was 24, Emily arrived, almost shot from guns so eager to be alive on the day she was born. The midwife at Booth Maternity Center could have used a catcher's mitt. And that's the way it was for a long time. Mom, dad, son, daughter. A rich man's family.

When I was 35, I was beginning to think I'd made a clean getaway. Honorable fatherhood acquired. Great kids. Good job. No complications. Sara and I were at last able to go out on a date without hiring a babysitter. We were becoming a couple again instead of Mom and Dad. And we were still young.

Don't ask about when I was 40. That was the very best year. Molly decided to be born almost 16 years after her sister Emily. I call such family planning a Catholic seven-ten split. She was both a surprise and a gift. That was the year I finally understood that God is love and Love is Molly. And that is the answer to the question why.

When I was 54, it was a hurricaine year and our first grandchild arrived that September with the winds of Floyd. Her name is Daphne. Daph-ne DeLeon. Daph-ne DeLeon. I can't help but sing her name to the tune of Waltzing Matilda. "She'll be a Daphne DeLeon with me."

And now I'm 58, the new 21, and I love Lucy all over again. My little girl Emily became a mother last Tuesday to a perfect baby girl. Her name is Lucy Ann. And, boy, do I got some 'splainin' to do to my little Lucy during the best years of her Pop Pop's life.