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| Little X's baby blanket. |
I may have written about this subject before, in which I’ve never really wanted to have kids. Sure, they’re cute and adorable when they’re tiny and quiet. They wear the cutest tiniest clothes, they gurgle and have chubby cheeks and tiny hands, but one shriek, one stinky diaper, one hint of a wail and I’m bolting for the other room.
I mean, even as a child growing up in a daycare, I wasn’t too impressed with my so called peers. In my formative years you could always find me sticking closer to the adults. Sure, part of that is a weird abandonment issue so I stuck closer to my mother more than most. However, it didn’t stop there. During camps, during field trips, instead of getting in trouble with my classmates I’d rather help out with those dreaded chores back with the teachers.
That’s not to say I was the weird kid at the back of the room eating paste... I did have a small group of friends growing up. It just means that I can remember getting into my mother’s car one evening after a hectic day at daycare in about third grade (a time when I thought I wanted to be a teacher due to some inspiration from one of my favourites), when I announced that I was never having children.
And until recently I stayed on that same path.
M and I would always joke around that when we got older and she was married and had the kids, I’d always be that one friend who’d be in designer clothes (being able to afford them after not having any kids). The friend who wouldn’t know what to do with kids besides give them money to go play with. I’d wear the big shades, the floppy hat and have several boyfriends with ridiculous names like Fabio and Paulo.
Not too bad of a life style I must say.
So it may come to some as a surprise now that my mentor S has had a baby and I gush over him like the new mother.
I mean, I’ve met children before. Held babies. I have two younger cousins so I’ve gone through the whole routine, watching them grow. Goo goo, how adorable. First step! Amazing. Oh my, look at how tiny those shoes are! So cute!
Yeah, whatever.
So I’m not sure if it’s perhaps just the time now that I’m getting older, if it’s the people involved, S and his wife are two awesome people whom I adore, or perhaps it’s just that whenever I see him, X is always asleep and cute, but I guess I can see why people want children.
Now, I know this sounds a tad childish myself, but I remember when X first entered the picture a few weeks back, I will admit that I was a little resentful. I don’t see S as a father figure--perhaps more of a big brother if we’re keeping with the family metaphor but after a passing comment by someone, I felt like my relationship with S was on rocky territory. Sure, he’d manage to make time for me in the past, even after he married, but this was a kid we’re talking about. Kids take a lot more time, more energy and while our sessions have been bi-weekly for the most part, there are still a huge impact on my life and allow me to get things sorted out.
I am the type of person who needs to hash it out and S has always provided me with a safe, non judgmental, non suffocating environment to say whatever it is I needed to say and provide wisdom or a joke as needed. Faced with loosing that before I feel I’m ready, yeah you could say I had a bit of a panic attack about it and resented what I imagined to be the problem.
However, after our first session back after X was born, S asked if I wanted to hold him. I was a little wary, as stated before, maternal and me don’t really mix, but I said yes anyways as it’s the polite thing to do. From the moment he was put into my arms, I was fine. He was the image of innocence, of love and tiny adorable-ness. From the tiny fingers to the little toes, from the big bright blue eyes, I grudgingly acknowledged that yeah, babies are pretty damn cute.
Baby showers on the other hand...
Yikes.
Don’t tell M but I plan on being too busy with Paulo to show up for that awkwardness.
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