born free

On good days, I feel excited at the prospect of having, as Calamity Jane said, a sidekick – a tiny little person that I’ll be madly in love with (I expect) who will manage to be both exhausting and wildly entertaining.

I can see suddenly not be annoyed (or not so much so) at Hank’s constant singing and noise-making because The Kid will be so amused, and who am I to stop the father-child bonding?  (No need to smirk, I’m sure that novelty will wear off soon enough!)

Hank & I have a million fantasies about the life of this kid:

We want it to learn Spanish and Chinese, from the earliest age possible. (Actually, we really want it to learn Japanese, but we figure Chinese will be more potentially useful, so we’ll go with that first – after learning 2 languages, any more will be a cinch.  Japanese can come after.)

We pray it will be musically-inclined, and be interested in Hank/Dad teaching it all the music-mixing tools, maybe be interested in going to work with him sometime.  I’d be thrilled if it became the next Wax Tailor or wanted to follow in Hank’s audio-mixing footsteps.  As for my footsteps?  I hope it will be more focused than I ever was, but I hope it will be as fearless in pursuing all his/her wild ideas, maybe stick with some artistic pursuits – maybe take up my favorite hobbies as more than hobbies (photography, writing, cooking.)  Mostly, though, I just hope it will have some wild ideas and think outside the box, like we did/do.

Both of us intend to push for semesters abroad.  *smile*  We feel like it’s such an incredible, important experience – s/he can go wherever they want, but they gotta go somewhere.  College abroad?  GREAT!

And of course, all our ideas might be blown out of the water.  Except the language thing.  This kid is going to be multi-lingual, dammit.  I don’t care if it goes completely off-track from everything we ever imagined, but it has to learn some languages.

On a bad day, I feel panicked about my loss of freedom.  People have always called me a “free spirit,”  I’ve always picked up and gone at a moment’s notice.  I’ve been free to toss a million wild ideas in the wind and see what sticks.  The past year, I’ve had thoughts about taking a couple months to go teach English in South America.  I can’t think like that anymore.  I can’t pretend that we might move to another country some day (well, I guess I can – there is always an outside chance we could move to and live in Japan if we really wanted, which I kinda do.)

I’ve always been a live-in-the-moment person, to the extreme.  I don’t really do plans.  I need to know that I can change my mind at the last minute (I often do.)  I’m known for my inability to stick to anything and I’m even more known for my tendency to completely freak out when I think I don’t have options.

Granted, some of that has been a… you know, “issue.”  It’s a bit of a psychosis, my need to always be on the move, even if only mentally.  One of the things I’ve had to work on is learning to sit still, learning to “live in the gray.”  So a part of me looks at this as being forced to learn – as there being something more important than myself, for once.  I intellectualize everything.  Having a baby is a new challenge for me to look at from every angle.  I need to think about the lessons that will be learned.  Just like moving to Prague, really – terrifying, yet an amazing experience.  I learned a lot about myself those 3 years.

I also fear my loss of privacy.  Having a baby involves a lot of people.  I  cherish my privacy more than most people, to a neurotic degree.  Even with my parents – my mom knows me well enough to know when I feel like talking, when I’m in the mood for questions, and when I’m just going to give short, clipped answers.    There’s going to be all these people (the family) wanting to be talking to me/us/it, seeing us/it all the time.  Things that I normally feel are invasive.  I have to share now.  Sigh.  Not to mention how guarded I am – I do not like being seen in vulnerable positions.  I go to great lengths to avoid it.  I can only imagine how much that’s going to be tested over the next year.

Then I wonder if I’ll be warm enough, affectionate enough.  I see all these other women out there who’ve been planning the birth of their children almost their entire lives.  Even those that haven’t, take to it like ducks to water.  I can take care of people, sure, but I’m not known for my warmth & affection.  This isn’t something that comes naturally to me.

I’ve been ambivalent about having children for a very long time.  Well, I take that back.  I never wanted kids, for most of my life.  I was vehement.  I was never the maternal type, I never played with dolls in a motherly way, never fantasized about a family of my own.  My fantasies were always about turbulent, passionate affairs, jetting off to foreign countries, living all alone in a tiny little apartment in Paris.  I still fantasize about living alone – I’ve never done it.  Every time I got close, I got caught up in a whirlwind and followed my romantic whims.  Not that I regret it – I just still feel like there’s so much I wanted to do.  Though I suppose almost every single person in the world feels like that, whether they’re single or married, with kids or without. It’s just never been enough for me to “travel” and go on vacations – I want/ed to go away, to live for months or years.

Then biology kicked in, or maybe love kicked in, I don’t know.  And then I became ambivalent.  In the span of one day, one hour even,  I could both really really really want one (just one) and really really really never want to have any at all.

It’s a complete unknown.

I feel the same way about marriage, actually.  Or any form of commitment.   There were days I couldn’t wait for him to ask, and days where I felt like I’d choke if he did.  (Everyone keeps asking now, “Are you getting married?”  My only answer is a shrug.  We had things to work out before this little bit of news, and we’re still going to have things to work out, so… one “commitment” thing at a time!  On one hand, I really don’t care – we’re clearly going to be connected for life now.  On the other hand… eh, let me just let that settle first.)

Now if you ask me to think about that life I lived, the one where I was in Prague and traveling… I also remember how weary I was.  I was exhausted from living out of a suitcase for so many years, from feeling so unsettled and rootless.  I was tired of the constant drama.  I wanted a home.  I wanted to stay put.  That was part of what attracted me to Hank in the first place.  He wanted to settle down, and we were talking about kids (albeit, in an idealistic, starry-eyed and not serious kind of way) almost from the moment we met.

So I figure, at the worst, I’ll be one of those irritating parents who try to force their kids to live the life they wanted.  “What do you mean you don’t want to go to Europe for a few semesters?  Who doesn’t want to do that??”

1 thought on “born free

  1. velvet

    i was always a free spirit, too. and having a baby didn’t seem to tame me that much, just made me have to be organized more 🙂 for me, it took a few months to figure out how to balance being a mommy-snuggling, heel-wearing, kickboxing gal, but i did it. i like to think of myself as a wild woman who just happens to be able to make some kick-ass cupcakes. isn’t that every man’s fantasy, anyway? 🙂

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