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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Having children

The most compelling reason I can see for having kids is not my nephew Milo. He is cute as hell, the most beautiful kid I've ever seen (no, really, I'm being objective), and my heart does melt when he hugs me and tucks his head into my neck. (The fact that he even seems to remember me, and didn't start crying when mom left him with me this week to babysit, makes me swoon a bit.) But still, that doesn't make me want to spawn.

He doesn't talk yet! I'm ready to start conversing. Pretty much I don't know what to do with kids if they can't carry on a conversation with me. So he's adorable and all, but he doesn't make my ovaries ache.

What does it--not that my ovaries ache. They don't--is seeing what joy my aunts and uncles, and my parents, find in their adult children. I remember all the crap they went through, heartache during the difficult teenage years, and all my cousins seem to have emerged victorious, on the other side where they are now friends with their parents. It is damn cool to see.

I thought about this all when I was with twenty or so of my relatives for Christmas. It was such a loud, happy place to be. And I thought about what it would be like to introduce some grand-kids (and great-grand-kids) into the mix. My aunts and uncles, parents, grandma, would be over the moon.

For a brief moment--and I blame my unquenchable competitive streak--I wanted to be the one to kick that off. I'm the oldest grandchild, after all, and the first to get married. Why not be the first to have a baby?

My strongest feeling about children is, what if we regret not having them later when it's too late? Ultimately, I don't think that's a compelling reason to reproduce.

But there's just something about a big, loud, happy family at Christmas, even if you have to slog through twenty years to get there.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Sarah said...

I think that having children is worth every minute of it, the good and the bad. I love Christmas at my mom's. It's big and loud and I think it is way more fun than anything.

1:58 PM  

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