Travel and babies, mostly...
Aug. 21st, 2006 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseI dropped Brian off at the airport this morning for his month-long Grand Tour of Europe. I know he'll have a fine time and it's a great opportunity and all that, but I'm going to miss the boy like crazy. At the moment, though, it doesn't feel particularly real (which may have something to do with the fact that I'm running on maybe four hours of sleep for the first time since I left college. Nothing feels particularly real at the moment.) It'll probably be an interesting social experiment to see if I retain my reclusive tendencies when Brian's not around or start spending more time with my friends.
Speaking of friends, Monica invited Brian and I to Shaylin's first birthday party (has it really been a year? wow) on Saturday, and while I appreciated the gesture, we were both rather glad to have a prior commitment that meant we didn't have to stay longer than an hour or so. Everyone else there was a parent with a small child, and while some of the children were quite sweet, Brian and I felt like we had almost nothing in common with any of the parents - they were all in their twenties like us, but they seemed completely wrapped up in their children to the point where they didn't talk about anything else. Admittedly, a large part of that may have been because we were at a child-centric party - but it seemed like whenever I brought up anything like movies, or music, or anything not-kid-related, I got a bunch of blank stares from everyone except Monica. To her credit, she tried to make us part of the group, but it seemed to pretty much be a hopeless case, and we bowed out early (and rather thankfully). If I'd known that was what the party was going to be like, though, I might well have brought Mr. Jerry Brown wrapped up in a blanket and kept referring to him as my "baby", just to see people's reactions.
Our prior engagement was dinner over at Chris and Jeanne's house, which was much nicer. I'd made a chicken pot pie, which came out quite well (I need to stick the recipe in my blog), and when we told Jeanne about our previous engagement, she burst out laughing - apparently one of her nieces or nephews had just spawned and an enthusiastic relative had sent a set of the most hilarous five-minutes-after-birth pictures. The poor baby's grapefruit-sized head was still conical from being squeezed through a grape-sized orifice, and her face was all red and blotchy - and that's aside from the fact that her head looked like an inflated beach ball stuck on the rest of her body. Her parents obviously were trying to be the happy newborn family that the picture-taker wanted, but it was pretty clear (with the mother especially) that they just wanted to go to sleep. There was even one where she appeared to be accidentally flipping off the baby - not that I'd blame her for doing so intentionally, if I were in her position. =D
All of this stuff about babies and families has brought to the forefront of my mind a phenomenon that's puzzled me for some time. When I was growing up, my mother told me many times that thanks to the joy of birth control, so long as I was responsible I could have as few children as I wanted, when I wanted them - I didn't have to be tied down by what anyone thought about when I "should" have them or who I should have them with. I admit that I was probably lucky in getting a mother who understood this, but I also got it from school health classes, too. So it always seemed logical to me that people would wait to have children until they had had a chance to get financially stable and do things like travel around the world that you just can't do with kids.
This doesn't seem to be the truth in practice, however. It seems like most people my age can't wait to have children, whether or not they're financially or emotionally ready. Some of it can be chalked up to genetics, I suppose - the urge to reproduce is pretty strong, and some people have difficulty separating "sex" from "procreation". Some of it is probably also societal - not every girl is lucky enough to have a strong-willed feminist mother, so some of them probably have kids because their parents want grandchildren. But still, who's to say they couldn't wait five years or so? While I'm sure having kids can be very rewarding, there are lots of other things I'd rather do while I'm young.
I dunno, I guess I just don't get the whole thing. But when it comes down to it, I've never been pregnant (thank God), never had any particular desire for kids (although admittedly, I got along with them a lot better when I was a teenager than I do now). Maybe I will in the future, maybe I won't (though I'm still leaning heavily on "won't"), but that's just it - I can always have them in the future. Right now I've just got too much other stuff in life I want to do...and since it's my life, I'm darn well going to do it. =)
Speaking of friends, Monica invited Brian and I to Shaylin's first birthday party (has it really been a year? wow) on Saturday, and while I appreciated the gesture, we were both rather glad to have a prior commitment that meant we didn't have to stay longer than an hour or so. Everyone else there was a parent with a small child, and while some of the children were quite sweet, Brian and I felt like we had almost nothing in common with any of the parents - they were all in their twenties like us, but they seemed completely wrapped up in their children to the point where they didn't talk about anything else. Admittedly, a large part of that may have been because we were at a child-centric party - but it seemed like whenever I brought up anything like movies, or music, or anything not-kid-related, I got a bunch of blank stares from everyone except Monica. To her credit, she tried to make us part of the group, but it seemed to pretty much be a hopeless case, and we bowed out early (and rather thankfully). If I'd known that was what the party was going to be like, though, I might well have brought Mr. Jerry Brown wrapped up in a blanket and kept referring to him as my "baby", just to see people's reactions.
Our prior engagement was dinner over at Chris and Jeanne's house, which was much nicer. I'd made a chicken pot pie, which came out quite well (I need to stick the recipe in my blog), and when we told Jeanne about our previous engagement, she burst out laughing - apparently one of her nieces or nephews had just spawned and an enthusiastic relative had sent a set of the most hilarous five-minutes-after-birth pictures. The poor baby's grapefruit-sized head was still conical from being squeezed through a grape-sized orifice, and her face was all red and blotchy - and that's aside from the fact that her head looked like an inflated beach ball stuck on the rest of her body. Her parents obviously were trying to be the happy newborn family that the picture-taker wanted, but it was pretty clear (with the mother especially) that they just wanted to go to sleep. There was even one where she appeared to be accidentally flipping off the baby - not that I'd blame her for doing so intentionally, if I were in her position. =D
All of this stuff about babies and families has brought to the forefront of my mind a phenomenon that's puzzled me for some time. When I was growing up, my mother told me many times that thanks to the joy of birth control, so long as I was responsible I could have as few children as I wanted, when I wanted them - I didn't have to be tied down by what anyone thought about when I "should" have them or who I should have them with. I admit that I was probably lucky in getting a mother who understood this, but I also got it from school health classes, too. So it always seemed logical to me that people would wait to have children until they had had a chance to get financially stable and do things like travel around the world that you just can't do with kids.
This doesn't seem to be the truth in practice, however. It seems like most people my age can't wait to have children, whether or not they're financially or emotionally ready. Some of it can be chalked up to genetics, I suppose - the urge to reproduce is pretty strong, and some people have difficulty separating "sex" from "procreation". Some of it is probably also societal - not every girl is lucky enough to have a strong-willed feminist mother, so some of them probably have kids because their parents want grandchildren. But still, who's to say they couldn't wait five years or so? While I'm sure having kids can be very rewarding, there are lots of other things I'd rather do while I'm young.
I dunno, I guess I just don't get the whole thing. But when it comes down to it, I've never been pregnant (thank God), never had any particular desire for kids (although admittedly, I got along with them a lot better when I was a teenager than I do now). Maybe I will in the future, maybe I won't (though I'm still leaning heavily on "won't"), but that's just it - I can always have them in the future. Right now I've just got too much other stuff in life I want to do...and since it's my life, I'm darn well going to do it. =)
