Socially speaking, this is about this time that people my age try to pair off and settle down. Particularly in the sect of humans – the large majority, don’t you find – who are participating in what I’ve called the video-game style of life (which is a title I stole from her, (scroll down) but not really the idea, since I came to it independently.) I’ve had friends having babies and friends getting married for the last couple years now, but as yet never thought much of this in terms of “next stage in the video-game life”. The babies were often happy accidents (or otherwise), and most of the young marriages I had seen did not end well, ended not a moment too soon, or the people were older than me, enough that I already considered them in that murky realm of no-longer-traditional-college-age “adults”. Whatever that means.
But now we are slightly older, and now it’s starting to happen a bit more. And it’s happening not in these strange one-side-of-the-bell-curve kind of ways, but with intentional bravado.
Two friends, a couple we know, just Settled Down. Bought a condo in a brand new development, the male half is off doing his big-money dream job, the female half is doing take-up-time temp work and presumably doing a lot of waiting for something. Then there’s another friend who gave Law School the old college try, didn’t do so well, and decided to come back home. With her husband. She has told us many times her “clock is ticking” (on whose time, honey?) so one would imagine they are doing the lower-tax bracket version of what our other friends are doing.
As I watch this happening I muse to myself about it in the same way you would if everyone around you began sprouting bat’s wings, or turning a purplish color. I am down with it for them; it would be foolish to attempt to do anything else. That’s a loud noise to try to yell into. What I’m curious about though is where this will go in a few years, and about the baby question.
All my life I have denied the existence of ‘maternal instinct’. I have always been open to the possibility of the Wanting To Parent phenomena that presumably happens to 20-30 somethings, but have not gone as far as structure my life around that possibility like people I know. I have not cooed over children nor said anything grotesque and covetous like ‘I want one’ as my female brethren have, and my man friends have been socialized not to even speak of fatherhood even if they wanted it. I don’t think it’s a wrong thing to want, I just think people go about it the wrong way: thoughtlessly, automatically, joylessly.
I’ve never really given children much serious thought I guess is what it comes down to. I’ve never said never, but for the most part I couldn’t adequately answer the question why. Why make babies. Why raise children. Why bother. If you say biologic destiny, I will get angry with you.
I was reading on a transatlantic flight recently and came across this passage:
The death of an infinite player is dramatic...for that reason they do not play for their own life; they live for their own play. But since that play is always with others, it is evident that infinite players both live and die for the continuing life of others.
- Carse, James P., Finite and Infinite Games
Weirdly, at the EXACT SAME moment I was thanking Jesus and the Easter Bunny that I was not in possession of the wailing toddler kicking my seat for the entire nine hours, I read this passage and thought, (for a split second, for the very first time in my life,) Oh. I should parent a child.
I blame Oregon for this. Not my age, not my gender. Oregon, as I have mentioned, is happier, lusher, greener, (economically speaking and just scenery-wise,) than where I came from, so I was ready for my soul to emerge from it’s dormant state under the dry frozen ground and for its tendrils to curl up and out from my center, popping out flowers and making fruit for creatures. (Uh, really, it started doing this in a new/different way when you came into my world.) But I was not expecting this intense appreciation for children/parent units I see toddling around in the streets. I have seen people talking with their children, not at them or down to them. I have seen people give options, not barking orders. I have heard mommies and daddies say, “that sounds like fun!” and also “that might be dangerous, what if we do this instead?” I have watched happy parents experiencing the world with their happy children, and it makes my heart sing. And it makes me think in different terms.
It also doesn’t change anything: I will not suddenly go running after people’s strollers to coo, nor will I be doing incredibly dangerous, selfish and irresponsible things like not mentioning a lack of birth control or anything like that. I still maintain there is no “Maternal Instinct”. This makes no change to my existing plans, which are scant: make a life here, make art, make happiness. Eventually make a life happen near you. Mostly it has been interesting, sociologically, to me. I have seen things and have started to think, “this would be a perfect moment to teach something.” To whom? Not to a child really. To a child audience? That is where I want some of my energy to go: in books. And I guess not necessarily kid’s books, adults are as deficit in simple things like being happy as anyone is. I am basically using this new soul as a new lens, a more focused lens. Hopefully something interesting will happen.
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