Marriage and children

Because I’ve spent a lot of this trip around Chris’s friends children, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about becoming a parent and what kind of parent I will be. And since my mom has been quite morbid in the last year, she hasn’t been shy about reminding me that every day, I am getting older (gee, I completely forgot this), and she wants to see her grandchildren sometime soon and wants to be around when they come. I guess that’s what parents are for – brutal honesty even when you don’t want to face it. I suppose that when she talks about wanting grandchildren, she also is implying that I would have to be married before those children would be born, but I don’t really see that happening anytime soon.

Marriage and children seem like a very distant future to me even though I am going to turn 28 soon. Most women of my mother’s time had already born all of their children by my age, so I can see why my mother feels that I am of ripe child-bearing age and condition. Seeing all of these young people interact with their babies, feed them, and change diapers feels so foreign to me. Some women get really excited and think, “Yay, one day I will be a new mommy!” Right now, I am thinking, “Thank God that is not me.”

Maybe part of the reason I’m not really looking “forward” to it is because I know Ed won’t be around to see me get married or bear children. The people who tend to be happiest in your life when these “milestones” are hit are usually your parents and siblings. My one sibling is gone forever. If I have kids, they will never know their Uncle Ed in the flesh, and they will only hear stories about him from me. I don’t really trust anyone else sharing stories about him.

And then I am reminded by the regret of someone I know whose dad died from cancer. She said that if there is one regret she has in life, it’s that her dad couldn’t be there to walk her down the aisle the day she got married. If the most important people of your life aren’t around to see you married, then I think, why would I even have a wedding?

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