Inheritance is put at risk as first grandson appears on the scene
WE ARE monitoring the situation closely, but it appears our place in the pecking order may be under threat.
I did the smart thing way back when and chose the eldest in a large family of girls to accompany me on the walk through life.
It made solid sense. Her dad, bereft of accompanying testosterone at the top of a large brood of clucking hens, would embrace the first man to breach the defences and show some longevity.
I monitored his fiscal policy for a number of years, assessed him as a long-term positive investment and finally got the ring on his daughter.
Pole position for inheritance within my own family seemed assured being the eldest and only son and all that. But a number of factors have conspired against said realisation, not least being my parents' apparent intention to waste every penny on their own frivolities without any care for my and their only grandchildren's future needs.
I read my Jane Austen, I know an income needs to be secured. Man cannot live on parenting columns alone. Hence the visionary choice of wife.
It was my version of buying into a pension plan at 22: while you can't conceive its value at the time, you know it's going to be much more expensive to get in at a later stage.
There were obvious fringe benefits. The wife is a honey, she is a good earner, she cooks, cleans and rears the kids with a great deal of élan. Combined with her residual values, cementing our status was a no-brainer.
I knew there would be challenges along the way but felt adequately prepared to meet them.
The first attack came from brother-in-law number one (BIL 1) who swanned into the arena talking up an interest in motorsports having obviously copped an eyeful of the father-in-law's (FIL) collection of Top Gear magazines stacked neatly beside his Suzuki in a garage full of greasy cogs.
This has always been a blind spot for me, never quite managing to muster any enthusiasm for men dressed in S&M fetish gear hurtling relentlessly around a track over and over again. While the mortality rate is high, it's not quite high enough to maintain my interest in what these overpaid playboys actually do.
I was concerned for a while but finally realised that no matter how many MotoGPs they attended together BIL 1 was, not to put too fine a point on it, from beyond the Pale and never going to quite get the straw out of his hair.
There are reasons we pay more for certain postcodes you know.
BIL 1 seen off, it was a long time before BIL 2 surfaced. But when he did, he made his charge hard and fast.
He's a bit older, well a lot older but we're not allowed poke fun at that, which was a potential issue with FIL but, once overcome, proved to be a magnificent hand to play.
They are generationally compatible and can reminisce about the 1970s together. How can you compete with that?
BIL 2 also married the perceived "favourite" daughter (undoubtedly the toughest, she sprinkles nails on her cereal for extra iron) so his chutzpah had to be admired.
My defences were probably lowered though because old BIL 2 is a Yank and took the favourite daughter off to live in America.
I mistook their absence from our day-to-day lives as their absence from the game. This could yet prove to be a fatal mistake.
For BIL 2 has played a trump card. He has done what neither BIL 1 nor I could manage in four attempts. He has produced a grandson.
This is, without doubt, a gauntlet thrown down. It raises the issue of possibly entering the breeding stakes again but a cost-benefit analysis that includes the added cost of an additional child and the possibility of another girl being delivered based on past performance suggests that the risk would outweigh the eventual, potential pay-off.
FIL and MIL travelled to the States for the birth so we must presume there has been a period of intensive bonding over which we have no control.
We can only hope to undermine any links that have been forged when they return and highlight, in as subtle a way as possible, the fact that this child is going to grow up American. These are the straws at which we clutch.
So, welcome to the world Daniel Sansone Junior. I'm looking forward to meeting you and reminding you not to get ideas above your station.
abrophy@irish-times.ie