HERB BENHAM: Quadruplets take on life side by side by side by side
| Monday, Nov 16 2009 03:52 PM
Last Updated Monday, Nov 16 2009 03:52 PM
When Carole Abella was pregnant with quadruplets, she was 5 feet tall by 5 feet wide.
Don't throw a shoe at me. Daniel, her husband, said that. The fallout is his.
That was 19 years ago. Like most parents, 19 years goes fast and slow, depending on the stage. When they were newborns -- Daniel, David, Sarah and Naomi -- time crawled backward.
"For the first six months, we changed 50 to 60 diapers a day," Carole said. "We had to color-coat everything. One baby was yellow, one was red, one blue and one green."
Daniel and Carole Abella are ministers for the Salvation Army. They have lived in Bakersfield for a year and a half. Before that, they had stints in San Francisco, Denver and Phoenix.
Seven is an important number in their lives. The quadruplets were born in the seventh year of their marriage, on June 7 1990, and were the seven sets of quadruplets born at a hospital in Phoenix.
Even if they weren't people of faith, which they are, with quadruplets it wouldn't hurt to trend toward optimism about things working out.
Start with money. Although Salvation Army provides the Abellas housing, theirs is not executive pay. Diapers are one thing, and were probably no small expenditure. But imagine college.
Most parents have a year, two or four between children so they hemorrhage money slowly. Not the Abellas. For them, the blood loss happened all at once. Last year, the four started Azusa Pacific. Scholarship, loans, grants, faith -- it all helped.
The quadruplets attending the same college is both surprising and not. Surprising because they had to have good grades to be accepted.
Surprising because they had to pull the trigger after visiting and liking four or five other colleges. Surprising because like any siblings, the Abellas are different with different interests (world communications, sports medicine, computer graphics, business):
Daniel: Fun-loving and social.
David: Independent and detail-oriented.
Sarah: Strong and caring; checks up on the boys.
Naomi: Independent and adventurous.
"We originally decided to go to separate colleges," David said. "When we toured Azusa, we fell in love with the campus and we knew we belonged there."
Notice the "we." Although the Abellas are different (they still don't have a car between them), they are not unlike four petals of a flower. They were born a minute apart -- Daniel, David, Sarah and Naomi. Among themselves, the first one is referred to as the oldest and the last one, the youngest
"I have a couple of best friends outside of the family but my siblings know them as well," David said. "We usually share the same friends because we introduce them to each other and the circle sort of spreads out that way."
How about romance? That could be tricky. Again, Independent David:
"We don't have boyfriends or girlfriends. We weren't allowed to date until we were 19 but it was nice because we could focus on being friends with people without the stress of a relationship. When I do get a girlfriend, she's going to have to get along well with my siblings."
Have the sense that the Abellas are unusual? They are. At Christmas and Thanksgiving, they help their parents feed and take care of more than 2,200 families.
"They've become nice adults," Carole said. "I am pleased they have the opportunity to go to college."
Good kids, nice adults, which brings us to the last question. Going from six in the house to two. What was that like?
"When they left for college, there was a big silence. It was harder on my husband, Daniel, than it was on me," Carole said.
Carole remembers kindergarten. She stood outside and cried. Finally, the teacher told her, "You can go home now."
Like many of us whose children move on, Carole and Daniel have grown used to the quiet. It helps that their children are doing well. They are on the road, side by side by side by side.
