Many of us want children. I know I did. How else can you get onto an airplane before all the luggage bins have filled?
Children provide us with the ability to skip work, miss deadlines, avoid boring parties and generally provide us with irrefutable alibis.
“My child is sick,” always works. “I can’t come because my child is sick. I didn’t meet my deadline/quota/mother at the airport/mother-in-law at the airport, because my child is sick.”
And if that excuse doesn’t work, just add projectile to something. You don’t even have to say vomit. You say projectile and people imagine sputum covering the entire spectrum of colors gushing over robes, onto floors and spilling into the neighborhood.
Along with all those benefits, we need children to fuel both our present and future.
Children mark renewal, youth and the promise of the future. My son just knocked my Vodka on the rocks off the counter. The future seems bleak and gray and it takes me away from my introspection. I pause, reflect, put on my red flip-flops to avoid the glass and move on.
Children provide the impetus, the push to enter into new situations, like when a child takes a chocolate from the buffet line we pass or screams loud enough to draw stares from blocks away. We meet new people and learn how to apologize without saying a word. Couples with children understand and smile sympathetically. The businessman sitting next to a screaming child on an airplane—-not so much.
Then comes the warm kisses on the cheek. The “I love you’s,” mommy and daddy. Little mouths mangle words and you laugh as you hug them. Little boys and girls hold your hand for strength and comfort walking into a new classroom, preparing for a shot. You watch your child sleeping, in peace and utter silence, beauty, youth, strength, love and life playing on a blank slate.
I shrug, warm up some tea and reflect on just how lucky I am to wake up to a new day, new season, new year.
It’s great fun to blunder around blindly helping two small souls enjoy a world filled with both dangers to face with courage and aplomb and pleasures to avoid, experience and share.