Impossible: explaining parenthood to childless friends
Filed under: Moms, Restaurants, Nolan, Adventures in Parenting, Emotions
My friend Shannon is back from a 5-month long whale-saving expedition on the other side of the world. She's been home for a week, and I just saw her at lunch today: tanned, sinewy arms, eyes glittering with the thrill of chasing her dream, with the raw anticipation of doing it again.We are so much alike, my friend Shannon and I, and we've never said it but I know we have both pondered it: we'd both be living such incredibly different lives right now if she had been the one to become unexpectedly pregnant two and a half years ago, and not I. She is traveling, chasing her dream. I am tending to my toddler, forging a different kind of hope.
"So - you can't really travel anymore. And things have kind of gone to pot in your personal life. And you don't have a social life. " She picked at a tomato on her plate.
I nodded.
"And yet? You'd do it again, you'd have Nolan again and you have no regrets?"
"None. It's so hard to explain, Shannon. It's like this massive, all-consuming love that is more important than anything else I've ever wanted to do."
"And so, is that why people have babies, do you think? Because they want that love?"
I thought about it. I can't really say, because my pregnancy wasn't planned. But I do know, if I ever had another baby, it would be because of the addiction to this love that is bigger than me, this fulfillment I feel when I can meet Nolan's needs.
It did make me think, though. I wonder why people have kids. Is it just because it is something we do as a species? A primal instinct? A need to nurture? Or curiosity about the unknown and the renowned?
I hope Shannon does have a kid one day. I think she'd be a good mother, too.
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