May As Well Pluck a Daisy

A friend’s blog prompted me to ruminate on the decision to have or to have not (children, I mean).  Also, I’ve had a very productive day already and need a small break.  There are only so many performance appraisals I can write before my eyes start crossing.

  

 

I know that having children will mean lots of changes.  Both Patrick and I will make huge sacrifices to accommodate our child(ren), for the next 29 years, which is a mind-boggling amount of time given that it represents the entirety of my life thus far, and I can’t even remember much of the first bit.  (I erased the rest of this paragraph, where I got bogged down in how I calculated 29 years.  Just trust me.  For Patrick and I, it’s 29 years.)

 

Before it became a moot point, when we were talking and thinking about our future, we were looking at this 29 year window and trying to move it around in our own lifetimes, wondering where it would best fit.  OK, we could start at 30, which would make us 60 or so when the kids were out.   It would be nice to be 60 and be able to retire.  Or we could wait, really enjoy our youth, and start at 35.  That would make us much older, but we’d have lots of years together first.  It was a fun exercise.

 

Sometimes, though, to prepare myself for possibly not being able to have children (although this proved not a problem for us, ahem), I would try to visualize my life sans babies.  And I think it could have been great, truly I do.  Ah, what it would be like NOT to have to plan your fledgling career, debt management, savings, and travel around children.  We would have lots more money without them.  We could rid ourselves much more quickly of that monkey on everyone’s back, student loans.  We could buy the beautiful antique furniture that we’d love to fill our house with.  I could take classes in neat things, like mosaic-making, or the cello.  With more money and flexibility and no kids’ school schedules to accommodate, we could travel a lot more freely, or even have two homes like Tropical Janey does, following the warm weather.  I haven’t started my long-term career track, and with 4-5 more years of pregnancy and breastfeeding ahead of me (aka chained to the child!), it’s going to be hard to kickstart it, whatever avenue I decide to go into.

 

Also, day-to-day there’s just more to do with kids.  In the beginning, there’s always something that makes you jump up – the kid needs a diaper change, or he spilled milk all over the couch, or he’s chewing on the dog’s toy (or the dog’s chewing on his toy) – or he just wants you to play with him.  Whether you’re feeling great or totally wiped, the kid’s needs are the kid’s needs, and you get up and meet them day after day, minute after minute.  Once they get older, the needs change, but they’re still there – they may include soccer or dance practice, which you have to drive them to.  It may mean science camp in the summer, which you have to pay for instead of putting in a new patio.  It may be sitting with them for two hours every night and going over homework together, when you’d rather be reading or enjoying a glass of wine, unwinding after work.  And then there’s the really hard stuff – like what do you do if they’re being bullied?  How involved do you get in their early relationships?  Is it ok to snoop if you suspect they’re on hard drugs, and how far can you go?  How dangerous is it to your well-being and happiness to be so totally dependant on the well-being of the children you’ve created?  Is there any pain quite like the pain a parent feels when their child is hurting?  Is there any grief like the grief of losing a child, something we risk suffering when we decide to birth them?

 

So, what I’m trying to say here is, I think that parenting is really hard.  It’s a long hard road that isn’t all cute babies and dimples and joy, though that’s a big part of it.  It’s something you will probably enjoy a lot more if you really want it.  I can totally understand why there are people who never want to have children, and I applaud them for not being pressured into doing something they don’t want.  This parenting life could really suck if it the rewards you reap weren’t rewarding to you.

 

Now, having written all that, let me tell you that there has never been a question in my mind since the beginning of my memories that I wanted to be a mother, and there isn’t one now, sacrifices, risk and all.  I was lucky enough to see the FUN that comes with having kids of all ages around as part of a supportive and loving family.  My sister, when she was small, used to walk up to me, walk right up to my lap to get as in-your-face as possible, and then scrunch up her whole face and make a funny sound at me until I could barely breathe for laughing so hard.  The memory of that alone can still make me laugh 18 years later.  And the memory of helping her learn to read.  Helping her tie her shoes.  Watching her walk the first time.  I can give up some dinners out for this.

 

I know that even now, decades past our cute baby stage, my four siblings and I continue to enrich our parents’ lives.  I also know that I do have a small measure of control over the extent to which this baby and our future babies affect our daily life.  We’ll still have Led Zeppelin playing in the house, even if it has to take turns with tunes from Sesame Street.  We’ll still have parties.  Patrick will still have bowling nights and video game nights, and I’ll still be in the band and probably at some point take a mosaic-making class, or learn the cello.  We’ll have occasional dates, and fork the $$ over for a babysitter, because it’s an important investment in your marriage and makes you like your kids more – playing the martyr isn’t healthy for anybody.  Life will not end, and I think we’ll both do a fine job of nurturing ourselves and each other, on top of nurturing the babies.  I don’t even have a remote idea of all the sacrifices that are coming at us, and nor do I have an inkling of the happiness.  But I’m excited to experience it, thrilled to know it’s coming.

 

So, in closing – what?  I don’t know.  I don’t know what my point is, except to assure my childless friends that I can see the appeal of a child-free life.  I hope they can see the appeal of the life we’ve chosen.  I’d also like to assure my unsure friends that you have time to make your decisions, and even once you do, we all question our choices.  I have been told on authority that there will be moments (especially in the first newborn month) that I will hold my child and sob my eyes out and wonder what on earth I did to my life by having this kid.  And there may be times when a woman who chooses not to have kids will look at a mother interact with her child and feel a real yearning for what she’s decided to forego.  But we all give things up every time we make a choice, and recognizing what we’re sacrificing can only bring greater value to the choice we’ve embraced, I think. 

 

Childless friends, of which I have many: even though we’re heading down different roads, you will still be a huge priority in our lives.  There’s plenty of room for love, of the parental kind and also the friend kind.  My babies will be very precious, but they’ll never know what the 80s were like.  I need you people in my life. Thank you for letting me preach to you.  Now we will return to your regularly scheduled pirate joke:

 

What do you call a pirate wench who poses for Playboy?

A Play-matey, arrrrrrrr.