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For someone who grew up surrounded by kids—four brothers and eight cousins on my mother’s side—I still feel, as I sink further into my thirties, that I don’t really know where they come from sometimes.
And don’t get me wrong, they’re the coolest! But why are they here, you know? What are the reasons that lead us to disrupt our own quiet—but also cool—lives for them.
I was once one, so that’s something. I know that they’re cute (thanks), funny (thank you), and a mysterious combination of small, yet terrifying strength.
I know that they are wise (thanks, again), messy, and full of layered observations while maintaining a laissez-faire attitude toward the establishment. Or should I say to the establishment and themselves because when it comes to working an audience, you won’t find anyone better unless it’s a baby Rodney Dangerfield.
I guess what I’m wondering is why someone would want to try to create one, if I can say that aloud. I’m not trying to be harsh or offensive, it’s just that, despite their level of awesome, isn’t my life as wonderful as it’s going to get without them?
The answer many people would go on record with is actually no.
Okay, well, if that’s the case, then perhaps I am putting the cart before the horse altogether, or, as it were, the kid before the adult?
That’s got to be it, right? Okay, so you think less about a baby and more about who might want to go in on one. You get involved with someone and you’re into them. They’re into you, too. Things happen and at some point after a number of months or years go by you sleepily say to them, “Hey, I want to make a baby with you.”
Can you imagine what it would take to say something like that?!
But in that moment lies a clue. Because I doubt, if you were to do that, that you would not say something so ridiculously left-field, so incredibly orbital in nature like a broadside of satellite, so absurdly spacey. At least without it coming from a moonstruck human who recognizes in another the potential for the sweetest of ingredients, the ancient one found in a little recipe called “Babymaking: 101.”
It doesn’t seem like you could create one without the “L” word. It doesn’t seem like it would compute without love with a capital L.
If anything, this realization allows my confusion to make perfect sense because I’ve never been in love before. No wonder I don’t understand this drive for tiny humans. I’ve never been around someone that made me want to put the time in to let that kind of dance unfold.
All I know is that recently, at a family gathering, my two-year-old niece decided she wanted to dress up like a human banana for her birthday party. She did it and it was all right there in a series of natural, earthbound moments. The banana shirt, the big shorts that were more like pants—it was all working for her and for us, too.
She sold me on herself and for once I felt like I understood where she came from. I thought, “Maybe I can visit this place, too.”
I’m okay with not having any kids in this life I’ve been privileged enough to lead. I would love, however, to be around someone that reminds me that that’s an option, and one of pure magic at that.
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