It’s the night before my 26th birthday.
Twenty six years ago tonight my mother was laying in bed wondering when I’d be born. Was she nervous? Was she scared? Exhausted? Worried? Anxious? Excited?
I think I know how I would feel if I were nine months pregnant right now: downright terrified.
•••••••
When I was younger I set rules for my life:
I would travel the world. I would not get married before I was 25. I would learn French. I would move to New York and live there for at least a little while. I would get a job that required me to wear nice clothes. I would shop at yuppie grocery stores and own matching luggage. I would date a lot of men and break a lot of hearts. I would turn down at least one proposal of marriage before I ever said yes. (I would channel Jane Austen.) I would learn how to order sushi and master eating with chopsticks. I would buy my furniture from Pottery Barn.
I had a vision for how I wanted my twenties to look, and this was not part of it. (Well, living in Canada was on my list, but I meant Prince Edward Island, not the landlocked desert of Alberta.)
So you’d think I’d feel disappointed in myself tonight.
But the thing about having a plan is that at least it gives you a good starting point. Plans are modifiable. Plans can change and still work out. I changed my plans along the way: I sacrificed some and gained a lot more. I made choices—conscious, well thought-out choices—that got me where I am today.
I don’t regret any of them. I made plans and I made changes. And I’m cool with that. I own it.
The problem is that I never made a plan for children, not even a vague one that I could modify later on. I just…simply didn’t think about it. Didn’t count on ever needing to.
For a very long time I vehemently swore I never would have children (a product of too much babysitting and one very traumatizing unit on reproduction in ninth grade Biology, I suspect). Yet all that time, in the back of my mind, I didn’t really take myself seriously. “I’m never having kids,” I vowed, yet all the while the older, wiser miniature-me in my head chuckled the way that older wiser people do, saying, “Sure, Camille; whatever you say.”
Later, once I met and married Poor Kyle, we figured we’d better get serious about our lives and start thinking about when we might try to have children. For awhile I got by with some pretty solid excuses: I wanted to finish my Bachelor’s degree first; I wanted to work for a while first; I wanted to get skinny first; I wanted to travel more first; I wanted to write a book first; I wanted to get rich first.
But the later it gets the thinner and lamer my excuses become: I want to grow my hair out first. I want to plant a garden first. I want to finish watching the last two seasons of Alias first because I boycotted it when they killed off Vaughn but I secretly always wondered how it ended.
And the later it gets, the more pressing the issue becomes. Not that we need to have children any time soon, no. Just that we need to make a plan for when we will have them. Five years into this marital union and we still haven’t made a plan for that.
Poor Kyle, he’s wonderful. He would have them any time. He’s ready now. He was ready four years ago.
Poor Kyle is not the problem.
I know this is nothing you haven’t heard from me before. I’m sorry if it frustrates you that I keep coming back to this. I think it’s probably annoying. I don’t expect or want anyone to give me advice or suggestions or even condolences or understanding. There’s nothing anybody can tell me that I haven’t heard before: You’ll know when the time is right. It’s a decision between you and your husband (and God, if the advice-giver is spiritually inclined). You’ll just wake up one day and want to have them. Don’t rush it. You might not ever want kids. You’ll do the right thing. You’ll be fine. You don’t have to have kids. Get a dog first and see how that goes. Try a guppie if a dog’s too much commitment.
So what do I want then, if I don’t want advice and I don’t want condolences?
I haven’t got a freaking clue.
At last, we arrive at our metaphysical destination: I am turning 26 tomorrow and I still haven’t got a freaking clue about life.
Weird.
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