While I have always loved kids and loved people, I have never thought, "Wow! I want to start a family. I really need to make sure that happens." An example of this disinterest lies strongly in an exchange I had with my mother when I was nineteen. My mom had enthusiastically started to buy books and toys for her "at some point" grandchildren and I freaked out. I remember practically shouting "I am NEVER having children!" at her.
For me, it wasn't that I didn't love kids or my partners. It was that I was painfully aware of my own human frailties as well as the traumas of growing up in a dangerous, unfair world. I couldn't imagine intentionally putting a living being through it. But curiously enough a light has been slowly shining on this dark side of my moon. This light comes mostly from my own personal/spiritual growth and from a lack of disgust, almost a slight enthusiasm, when the idea arises.
It all started two years ago when I went shopping for baby clothes with my boyfriend at the time. He was traveling home to visit his family and some wanted cool American clothing for his nephew. As we looked at the options I noticed something was amiss. And that something was that I wasn't fighting nausea. Up until that point, every time I'd even pass the baby section of a store with a boyfriend I would feel a wave of panic and nausea; I'd deep breath my way through it until we made it to the safe haven that was electronics or office supplies. This excursion was the first time I'd been with a partner and the idea of having a family together didn't make me break out in a fearful sweat.
Then last weekend I helped out a friend who's car had broken down. She desperately needed to fix it that day but her daughter had come down with strep throat and she needed to be taken to the hospital. My friend asked if I could take her daughter. So I took a twelve year old to the doctor on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Honestly, we had a blast. She wasn't feeling that badly once we started to hang out. We played games in the waiting room, sang silly songs while waiting for the doctor and when it was all over I took her grocery shopping with me. It was so fun and we laughed and were silly. I asked her, as the thought of being someone's mom washed over me, that if I was a step mom to a hypothetical family would I be the coolest or the weirdest one she'd known. She smiled slyly then emphatically stated, "The coolest AND the weirdest!" with a bright toothy smile. It was rad. That day I saw myself putting a child's desires and needs before my own within a familial context and I felt good about it.
Then I saw this picture and it was game over:
It is a family dressed for Halloween as three of the characters of one of my favorite books "Where The Wild Things Are" on the subway headed to what I pray is a wild rumpus. Max looks very regal and the Wild Things look savage yet tame; equal parts adoring and ravenous.
When I saw this picture and imagined a nuclear family like this that reveled in stories, creation and loving each other on their own terms, I saw into a possible version of my future. I saw myself guiding and teaching a new growing being about life and its cycles. I saw myself co-steering that ship with a partner who was equal parts adoring and ravenous. I saw us making what our family was, what it could be, based on what we wanted and had yet to fashion into existence.
And I felt happiness in a way I'd never felt before.
Thank goodness for the ability to change my mind. :)
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