Fearing What I Want Most?

Yesterday I went to visit my 5-month old, translucent-haired, blue-eyed angel of a niece, and I was reminded of the amazing power a baby can have over a room of grown-ups. Something as simple as a smile or a burp can turn every adult in a 20-foot vicinity to mush. In my family, we’re definitely whipped.

My mom and dad bought the baby a stuffed animal sheep on their most recent vacation, and every time I tapped it against her tummy and made a psst noise, she broke into hysterical giggles. She had the entire family mesmerized and cracking up right along with her. Every belly laugh she gave sent all of us into a frenzy.

On the drive home, as we gushed about how cute she is, I was hit with the now familiar mix of “I want” and “I’m terrified of having” a baby.

I’ve always seen myself as being a mom one day. I’ve spent hours and days of my life babysitting and working as a nanny. I’ve taken care of 2-month old twins, out of control toddlers and even unruly teenagers. I feel like I’ve accrued an ample amount of experience in the child-rearing arena. But the older I get, the more afraid and unsure I am about having kids.

I think the reality of what it all means becomes more crystallized with each passing year—making my fear grow and grow. When I was young, it just seemed like you had them, fed them, changed them, helped them with homework and sent them to college. However, now I see that you have to change your life. A lot. You can’t just take a nap whenever you want and stay out a half an hour later than you ‘d planned. You can’t eat girl scout cookies for dinner because you have someone else to cook for. You have someone else’s life in your hands. You have to protect them and shape them and teach them. It’s a huge responsibility that just gets more gigantic each time I think about it.

And this makes me wonder: Am I really cut out to handle it?

I’m really great at being an aunt and a babysitter. Maybe that’s all I’m supposed to be. Maybe that’s how I’ll get my kid-fill for eternity. Just plug those yearnings with other people’s children.

Then I think about being pregnant. In addition to always thinking I’d be a mom, I definitely always wanted to be pregnant. The thought of someone else invading my insides, moving around when they felt like it, keeping me awake at night, giving me a big fat stomach—it all seems fascinating. I cannot imagine not experiencing that. And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe wanting to take the first step is all it takes to handle becoming a parent. After that, you just tackle the next step when it’s in front of you.

I’m sure I’d be filled with trepidation if I stood at the bottom of a 14,000 foot peak. But I also feel confident I could climb it. Especially if there were cute smiles and belly laughs along the way.

6 Letters; Synonymous with Spooky

True story: Last night I was playing Scrabble with Mr. Wonderful and some otherworldly force took control of my letter tiles. It may have been one of my deceased grandmas having fun with me, or maybe it was just pure coincidence, or perhaps it was Fate, pushing me to blurt out a phrase that probably scared the pants off Mr. W.

We were about halfway through a bottle of Pinot Noir, a third of the way through LOST, and a few dozen words into our game, when I drew four new tiles and saw the following on my wooden rack: VIUOELI

I started rearranging to try to identify the highest point combo…and there they were…those six letters… I LOVE U

Yes, there was a superfluous “I” in the mix, but those six were what mattered.

“Hmph,” I said to him, “I have a phrase over here right now.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked, more concerned with adding up his score.

I didn’t want to read it aloud, so I grabbed L,O,V, and E and lined them up next to an R on the board. Mr. W chuckled and suddenly I found myself spinning my rack around and saying, “It said ‘I love you’ before I laid those down.”

I wasn’t looking directly at him as I said the words, so I’m not sure whether his eyeballs detached from his retinas and momentarily popped out of his skull. But I took his quiet, “Huh,” as an indicator that I may have freaked him out. Perhaps I should’ve just told him my letters spelled VILE IOU…

Fish Hos, and Other Sluts of the Animal Kingdom

Back in November, a friend of mine at work bought a fish tank. Since then, one of the little swimmers she owns has gotten pregnant and squeezed out kids twice. Total aqua slut.

Each time this happens, my friend's daughter gets excited and is subsequently saddened when the newborn fishies disappear.

And why are they disappearing, you ask? Because mom is eating them.

Talk about marinelife irresponsibility. First she accidentally gets pregnant and then she covers her mistake by turning the babies into an afternoon snack. Rats and mice do this too. It's completely freaky.

I know they don't have the capacity to think "oh how cute look at my little schmoopy baby," but what's the deal with the dining habits!? My cousin gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy just this afternoon and I'm pretty sure she didn't find herself thinking "mmm he looks like one tasty piece of meat."

If anyone has an explanation for A. The promiscuous behavior of fish (and rats and mice) and B. Why they turn their children into chow, I'd love to know.

Congratulations, Kim and Trav, on the birth of Liam Frank! He's a delish little morsel of baby perfection.

The Super Cuteness Award

...and today's award goes to....

Mr. Wonderful for getting me a copy of the 2-disc DVD of Into the Wild.

Bravo!

Risky Business

In the last week or so, I've received two emails from Victoria's Secret, promoting this offer. Both times, the headline made me laugh.

I know they're promoting free shipping and returns, but it seems like they're encouraging you to try some newfangled infommercial product. Or protect yourself from accidentally buying comparable pants that cause thigh dermatitis or an uncontrollable desire to throw your cloth-clad legs under the tires of moving vehicles.

Act now and we'll throw in the anti-herpes thong and the nipple-hair-be-gone bra!

Catapult

A good friend called me last night to announce that her boyfriend proposed over the weekend. (Sigh...) Obviously, she's completely thrilled to be engaged. But I think part of what makes her situation so very exciting is just how far she has come over the past few years.

It wasn't so long ago that she felt stuck.

She had been working the same job for a long time and wasn't getting much fulfillment from it. She was living at home, and seemed hopeless about making enough money to move out. Her love landscape was looking a bit like a deserted island (or at least one with unappealing natives). She always seemed overshadowed by sadness when I saw her.

And then she decided to make a change. She quit her job. Which led her to a new position, where, hip hip hooray!, she met her fiancé. Within a year, she had moved in with him and was working yet another job that she completely loved. Choosing to alter one aspect of her situation made all sorts of other wonderful things fall into place.

I don't think this is just coincidence. When life starts to feel stale, we have to take risks, make jumps, shift things around if we want to catapult ourselves forward. It may seem scary in the moment, but if we know we need to make a change, it will work out in the long run. And maybe it'll work out better than we could've ever imagined.

There Comes a Time

“I put them in a Pop-tart box and left them on your desk,” she told me over the phone.

I was twenty-one, in my first serious relationship, and relying on my big sister to sneak birth control pills to me. She’s a nurse and was working at an OB/GYN office at the time—where the shelves were always stocked with free samples of Ortho Tri-Cyclen.

Although I had been responsible enough to visit my school’s Health Center for a check-up and b.c. prescription, I was not at all grown up enough to let my mother find out I was finally engaging in youthful debauchery. I was convinced my virginity’s passing would send her into cardiac arrest or some sort of prolonged period of mourning. Therefore, pill delivery had to remain a covert operation.

The pop-tart drop was cutting it close. We were playing with fire. The desk my sister had left the box on was at my parents’ house. In my old bedroom. I had to face my mother to pick it up.

I tried to be nonchalant when I dropped by and gathered my mail and—ohwhatanicesurprise—free pastries from my sis.

She and I were able to continue our secret exchanges for several more months. Then motherly intuition, or perhaps just plain nosiness, kicked in and my mom began to ask questions. Not to me, of course, but to my supplier.

Coming from the same DNA, my sister is just as unskilled at lying as I am. We have a terrible propensity to just blurt out the truth anytime anyone asks us anything.

So when the mothership directed her information-gathering tractor beam at my sis, she immediately crumbled. Not a detail was spared. Thankfully, a second-hand report was enough to satisfy mom. She never confronted me on the subject.

Christmas morning, that same year, we all sat around sipping coffee and orange juice, passing tissue-filled bags and bow-laden boxes in my parents’ living room. “Here, open this one,” my mother said, handing me a package across my grandmother’s lap.

I tore into the paper and at once saw an all too familiar logo. I looked at my mom and she gave a wicked little chuckle.

“What’s that?” grandma asked, picking up my mom’s devilish grin.

“Nothing,” I said, “Mom just knows how much I love Pop-tarts.”