It was in the delivery room on a cold Friday in December 1990, minutes before her triplets were born, that a doctor’s bellowing voice started the clock ticking to a day Betsy Tanner has dreaded ever since.
“You’ve got 18 years,” the doctor said, “till they all go to college.”
Now, in a Wilmette living room, the final hours have arrived. Plastic hampers fill up with mattress pads, laundry detergent, computers galore — the essentials of dorm life far, far from home. They’re in triplicate and, as always, in order of birth, one each for Geoff, Alex and Emily.