Functional? No. That is not what I meant to say. No, really. I am officially halfway through their vacation away from us and I am am finding it surprisingly (if not a bit disturbingly) easy to get along without them. It is easy, of course, because I know they are with my sister and my mother and their cousin having loads of fun, being spoiled rotten and probably being better taken care of than when they are at home. As well, the floor nothingness, just like the nothing in the Neverending story has spread to our hallway, making our house look more like a trap for Indiana Jones than a home. It is a good thing they are a few hundred km away.
By why do I feel guilt for not missing them more? Why? They sure don’t miss me (except when they are tired and need something to bitch about). Motherhood, I tell you. Frought with peril. Why does everything about this state have to be ambiguous? Even the love. I don’t know where I am going with this actually. It is six in the morning and I am thinking of my kids via the terrifying route of a little nine year old girl who has been missing for two weeks. I just heard her mother on the radio yesterday and I almost had a panic attack. She was crying and could hardly get her sentences out, begging anyone who might know something to come forward. Sheer desperation and terror.Knowing that some vital part of you has just been violently ripped out and you are condemned to continue your life a hollow shell. Everything that lays just beneath the skin of parenthood, really.
Having said that, the subject of having children has been coming up lately among my babyless friends and this might just be the time to broach this issue. It doesn’t matter when you have kids, or how worried you are about how much you will fuck them up (which you will do inevitably), or how difficult they might possibly be in their teenage years. It just DOESN’T MATTER. Because once they are there, you would not have it any other way. Yes, it changes you, and in my opinion, for the better. I am more confident, more efficient, more able to roll with the bumps life throws my way (of course, as previous posts will attest, perhaps not always with grace and panache). Yes, it is hard. I would never gloss over this fact, as it would come back to kick me in the ass quite swiftly. Yes, sometimes I feel like I should drop my kids off at social services and spare them the trauma of the next fifteen years. But mainly, I can’t imagine my life without them. All this to say that if you want kids than just have them because there will never be a good time and you will never be ready.
Lina Branter 