Throughout my 29 years, I was one of those people --- “oh, I don’t want kids.” When someone would say to me “this child is the best thing to ever happen to me” I would scoff and think that their lives were miserable and that they HAVE to say that, so that their lives are not deemed meaningless. It makes them feel better, it gives them purpose. A baby would be in the room and I would virtually ignore this little thing, thinking it so fragile that I would turn nervous. I thought that moms were so super protective of their children, not wanting to subject them to my sometimes sailor-like language. I have dropped china, crystal from Denmark, you name it—why would I want to hold a baby? I would break it, hurt the baby, and lose a friend (the parent) all in one clumsy move. Babies were for responsible, proper, and mature people—not me, who would rather go drinking and see a movie than spend any time with a squeaky, delicate baby. Babies were for people who had real jobs, and a real house, and who had their shit together. I wanted to be free from all that—live my life as free as possible, not to be restrained by a small child and all the responsibility tied to it. I always wanted my focus to be on Jenna and any distracting little baby would take away from that. Jenna and I were a team! “Three’s a crowd.” Oh, and the cost! Babies are sooo expensive--I have heard it all---and we would have to start thinking about what school district we wanted to be in, which would lead to a house deep in some suburban sub-development, and me becoming a slave to my job because I would have to provide for my new family. I would essentially have to change my attitude, my way of life, and give up all my personal dreams. It would be a huge crimp on my life—like a giant vice, strangling my creativity, my hopes, and all my aspirations. I wanted to live all over the world, travel endlessly, go back to school, play in progressive middle eastern Math Metal bands, learn how birds can fly in unison together, open up Wusz Brews Incorporated, figure out fractals, which would in turn lead to solving the Universal Equation, and become a master didgeridoo-ist. No way can I do that with a kid around.
Wait for it, you know what’s coming……………………..
Wait for it
Well, of course………………………….I was wrong! My guitar amp is a little dusty, and my book on fractals is still to be read, but basically my life and my dreams and all my aspirations have hardly changed one bit. There certainly was a period of adjusting mentally, and physically (still is), but a baby has been a positive addition to our lives. The greatest thing of all is that I have someone new, someone moldable, to project my future on to, because she will be with me whatever happens. She will pick up on my idiosyncrasies and learn to love them—isn’t that great? After 11 years, Jenna is hardly adaptive to my personality, but almost instantly Mayzie is just like me!!!! A baby brings out true self (before I only thought beer would do that); she summons the true you. It is truly pure, primal, and completely indescribable. One look into this face and I become dad:
But I won’t be a hard ass dad. I will be a dad who relies on Jenna to do all the disciplining. I can’t imagine ever needing to spank this, it’s just too cute:
It’s official, though, we are parents. We go to parties with non-parents and they think you have been a parent all your life—“you can’t drink”, or, “you have to leave early”, or “what do you do for fun?” Stuff like that. Like we are, and always have been, boring. To others, we seem mature (you have to be to have a baby, right?)—sure, we are aware of the situations we bring Mayzie into, but I can definitely still relate to a non-parent.
We are a team. A team of three. We Wusz Three. I like the ring of that (We Wusz Four doesn’t sound very good at all, though). We are going to travel, we are going to live in other countries, we are going to open up Wusz Brews Inc., and we are certainly going to continue living our lives like we always have. We just have a third teammate now. It’s almost like Mayzie is 29 years old right from the start, since she will know all I know. So by the time she is 29 she’ll really be 58??!?! Her smarts will blow all out of the proverbial water.
We often think about what crazy things parents say: “my life is complete now”, “she/he brings purpose to my life”, or the classic “this child is the best thing to ever happen to me.” I am still saying that is B.S., but I now understand where they are coming from, rather than just thinking that was merely parent spew. They love their baby and they see it’s love for them in return. I still say it is B.S. because I believe that we, as adults, are still growing. Those phrases, to me, seem to say that your life is over now, all is focused on the child. I don’t think so. Being yourself and teaching the kid all you know by example (assuming you aren’t meth-y or a crack head or something) is the best thing you can do for that child. It makes me excited for our future because I am watching this kid do something different everyday (check it out-- she even pointed the other day): 
Yet I am living my life as best I know it. We watch the same movies that we always did, hang out with the same people we always did, talk about the same things we always did, and dream the same dreams we always did. There is just someone else in our life now that we need to take into consideration, someone that will hopefully adapt and love the life we will provide for her. And of course this will alter the plans I had before we had Mayzie, but knowing that wherever we go and whatever we do, she will be there right with us, makes any plans that may change seem okay.
So, I think the moral is that if you are reading this, and you have no kids—go have a kid, it will make your life SO MUCH BETTER. Haha. Seriously, though, if your life sucks now, than your life will continue to suck when you have a baby. But it’s worth a try. You never know.
Posts
1 comment:
Congrats Nick and Jenna. I am very happy for both of you.
Post a Comment