MOM TO MANY KAREN PALMER AND HER HUSBAND BRUCE HAVE THEIR HANDS FULL

"Mom!" says Chanelle, 15, Beau, 13, Callie, 13, Rita, 12, Riley, 11, Rubie, 10, Rits, 9, Cole, 8, Thomas, 6, Rainee, 6, Andrew, 6, Darcie, 5, Makenna, 4, Lincoln, 4, Daniel, 3, Samuel, 2, and Emmett, 1.

"Lower your tone," says Karen Palmer.

Also, help your sister.

And put those boots away.

She says this in a low, firm voice. Which is the first thing you notice in the Palmer house: There are no shouts or cajoling. Karen Palmer rarely says things twice.

Her house is clean. Picked up, cleared away, the living room downright formal. The carpet in the playroom new. At the Rock Bottom Ranch, 20 acres on Spokane's West Plains, there are horses, dogs, chickens and kids, 17 of them.

They are, by birth or adoption, all Palmers.

Eskimo, black, blond, they whoop, tease, have sleep-overs and jockey for space at the computer. They go to private school at Christian Heritage in Edwall. They sit at one long dinner table and there is simply no easy way to describe that.

"There is no visual picture you get with 17 children," Karen Palmer admits with a laugh. "People think the mother's either incredibly organized or has been lobotomized and feels no pain. Neither one is true. There's no magic to it - just a lot of hard work."

Driving the bus

She never intended to be anybody's mother.

Watching her mother raise eight children convinced her, it was too much work, not enough glory.

The first time motherhood happened, she was working as a whitewater river guide. Thirteen years later, she's the mother of 10 sons and seven daughters. A woman whose other car is an airport limo.

The limo arrived in February, shortly after the last three kids. Refurbished from an actual airport transport, it holds 21 - the whole Palmer family plus two friends.

Once at NorthTown, two elderly women asked if her bus was going downtown. Karen Palmer said helpfully, "Well, it can."

Family faith

At dinner, they bow their heads and pray.

Bruce Palmer, 38, thanks God for the hands that made the food - Karen's hands. Tonight she made bean burritos - 30 of them - with sour cream, olives, salsa, fresh corn muffins with honey, a raft of nachos. Lunch was 18 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Groceries run $2,000 a month.

As her husband prays, Karen's hands find the feet of baby Emmett in the highchair next to her and squeeze his chubby toes.

"Lincoln, wipe your nose," she says as the blessing ends. "Darcie, do you have to use the bathroom? Rita, please go find Thomas." She doesn't skip meals, but neither does she remember eating them.

She gets up at 4:45 a.m. every morning and in the stillness, sits with her prayer journal and morning devotions. First, she vents.

"I have to do all the talking and then I'm willing to listen," she jokes.

It was in those hours that the nudges would come, the strong sense that this is what the Lord wanted her to do, what her husband calls "the God thing."

Where some people might pursue flying or golf, the Palmers pursue parenting.

"Karen and I recognize that we have talent to do this. It's God-given talent," Bruce Palmer says. "It helps that we're a good team with a highly successful marriage. But it also happens to be our mutual calling."

Holly and Darcy Weisner - he's head basketball coach at Shadle High School - are pursuing adoption themselves based on the Palmers' example. They've been inspired by people who have traded the American ideal of a comfortable retirement for a life devoted to children.

"I really see it as an extension of their faith. They put into practice what God would have them do - to help kids that didn't have any hope," Darcy Weisner said.

The couples both attend Garland Avenue Alliance Church, and Weisner said when their children play together, he's always struck by how consistent the Palmers' parenting is.

"We are reading off the same sheet," Karen agrees. "We know where the line is, and we always call it at the same place."

`They growed me up'

The Palmers met at Seattle Pacific University, where she was graduated in communications, he in business. He wanted kids. She was one.

"My whole agenda was to have fun. I had self-discipline as long as I was instantly gratified," she said.

Married by her father, a Christian Reform minister, they worked as river guides and had two children, a boy and a girl.

They moved to Anchorage when Bruce, whom she only calls Palmer, became a representative for a pharmaceutical company, A.H. Robins.

They discussed adoption. Palmer wanted a big family, and Karen's own family of eight included two adopted Korean brothers.

"When you have adopted brothers who bring so much into your life and family, it just seemed natural," she said. To adoption officials, it seemed ludicrous.

"We were young, fertile, with two babies of our own," Karen said. "The door just seemed closed."

So they had more children of their own. But the nudges continued.

The more they talked, the more the silence around them grew. "Nobody said, `What a great idea."'

Undeterred, they paid $350 for a home study that Karen sent throughout the region. Eventually the call came: three siblings, labeled withdrawn and with learning disabilities.

"You learn very quickly that labels are misleading," she said.

They were children who'd never been tucked in or prayed with, who couldn't express their anger. The Palmers started with the basics.

"When you feel like this," her face contorting, "you're angry," she'd say.

"It takes a tremendous amount of firm discipline and consistency and a lavish amount of affection and love. But it also takes a long time. They don't believe it."

The next nudge brought a little boy, a "ball of anger. It took a serious investment of time, energy and prayer, and we didn't even see his personality for two years."

In the midst of it, Karen became pregnant unexpectedly. Distraught, she called her mother, who calmly advised her to have faith.

The troubled boy, watching everyone bond with the new baby, began copying their behavior. He was transformed.

By then, so was his mother.

"It was the flint on flint thing," she said. "I learned never to doubt my inner convictions. Consistency and follow-through are everything, even if you have to do it 100 times a day."

Another prayerful nudge, another call from a caseworker. Three more sibling boys.

By the time Bruce requested a transfer to Spokane (to be closer to grandparents in Washington), they had 13 children. Six by birth, seven by adoption.

At the Anchorage airport, the doctor who delivered her babies told her, "There'll never be another one like you."

Rock Bottom

There is no giant toy pile anywhere at the Rock Bottom Ranch. There is no matching bedroom furniture, either. No matching sheets. There are rooms that smell a little too much like babies. Piles of folded clothes at bedsides seem small.

But it otherwise seems little different from any other middle-class household. Karen wants Chanelle to have voice lessons this summer, and maybe for a piano teacher to come in.

With vacations difficult to achieve, the 36-year-old Karen Palmer holds her own summer "boot camp," complete with shaved heads (for the boys), T-shirts and workouts. The 5-foot-11-inch Palmer is a familiar neighborhood sight, jogging three to five miles, kids in tow.

"It's not politically correct to have this many children," she said. "There's an assumption the value of parenting decreases with each additional child and that you can provide less, and that's a false assumption."

The couple can't give each child ballet lessons or a room of his own.

"But you can provide a good work ethic, conflict-management skills, self-control, and the opportunity for a child to make a contribution, not just receive."

At Christmas each child receives one present, chosen by a sibling. They don't worry about Santa. They celebrate with food, staying up late and lots of visitors.

Birthdays, the Palmers pull out all the stops: balloons, streamers, cake. Karen can't bake, but Beau, 13, can and does.

After dinner, Bruce Palmer reads from Proverbs, then quizzes the older kids on words like discipline and despise.

"Why do we have to accept discipline?" Chanelle challenges.

"Because discipline is not just punishment," her mother says. "It's training."

It's a serious question, and the adults give serous answers. They are often not very serious.

Batting one-liners back and forth, the Palmers have a traditional marriage that is clearly the foundation of the family.

"What I need the most is for Palmer to totally enjoy me as a person outside those other roles," Karen said. "He doesn't just see the mother of his children."

What he needs, apparently, is fingernails. She has long pink ones, "hooker nails," she says laughing. "My husband loves them."

If anything happened to the couple, Karen's sister Nancy has agreed to step in. But these are people who trust in God.

Her greatest fear is that their children will grow up to be self-absorbed. Her greatest hope is that, as adults, they'll be givers, that the relationship skills they learned in this home will ripple out from them. She doesn't care what professions they choose.

So long as somebody makes her a grandmother.

Copyright 1996 Cowles Publishing Company
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.