Have children, they said.
It will be fun, they said.
You recount these words as, bleary eyed, covered in snot and
spit and pooh and smelling worse than your wheelie bin on pick up day, people lean
over your bundle of “joy”, cooing and aahing.
Mere minutes ago, that self-same angelic demon (see what I did there)
was screaming blue murder for something which clearly you were not equipped to
provide, whilst simultaneously upchucking sour milk, blowing snot bubbles and
squeezing runny poop out the sides of the flipping expensive disposable nappies
you practically had to mortgage your house to buy. They look at you askance, these “put together”
people who keep touching your child with their germ ridden fingers, and you can read the disapproval in their eyes as they fix on the stains on your clothes and
the rings under your eyes.
Some time passes and the offspring learns the ability to put more than 2 words together, and to speak in semi-sensible sentences. Yay, you
think. Now the child will actually tell
me WHAT is wrong, instead of just yelling incoherent gibberish.
Turns out that now the child doesn’t stop telling you what’s wrong – with
you, with the food, with the brand of bubble bath, with the shoes you picked
out, with the way you did their hair, with the fact that pudding comes after
the meal and not before. Oh and let’s
not forget the “why” of it all. Why?
Why? Why? Because I bloody well said so,
that’s why.
Years pass and you still have not had a single unbroken night of sleep. Even if the child sleeps through, you
hear phantom sounds of burglars who are breaking into your house to steal your
baby. You lie there, trying to distinguish the difference between your husband’s
breathing, your child's breathing and that of the would-be kidnapper.
You hatch plans on how to hoist the kid and yourself up through the
trapdoor, leaving hubby to fight the evil-intentioned psycho off with a stick.
They start school. Leaving you crying at the gate, as they start their
great walk across the school yard towards independence and phonics. They bring you homework to do and books to
cover, projects to co-ordinate and study rosters to enforce. They insist on you attending sport days and school plays. And then
later on insist that you don’t. You
consider donning a moustache and a bowler hat and going anyway.
You follow a career path of sorts, resulting in the return of those
self-same disapproving looks you received for the puke stains on your clothes
that many years ago, from the moms who don't. Screw it, you say,
and pour yourself a big glass of chilled dry white.
They take an active interest in sports. You buy every single item of clothing or
equipment they might need for each extramural.
They quit. Eventually they find
the extra mural that they love – but your finances and enthusiasm are depleted.
They become teenagers.
The why’s continue. The smell
returns. All accompanied by a heavy dose
of attitude. You wonder if perhaps your
child is legit bipolar because one minute you are the recipient of hugs and
kisses and the next second there is a whirlwind of door slamming and “it’s not
fair” in the air. Or sullen
silences. And you are still tired. And still trying to figure out if your teen
will be able to crawl up into the trapdoor without you having to lift them
because your damn back is so sore. And
anyway you can’t hold them and your glass of wine at the same time.
They enter the late teens and shit gets real yo. You look at tertiary educational institutions
and try work out how many internal organs you need to sell to afford to give
your child the best possible opportunities, knowing that your liver is unlikely
to yield much in the way of returns. Suddenly the Hot Wheels car is not good enough
– they want one which can actually convey real life-sized people. There are love interests and pimples and hair
sprouting in awkward places. There are
brands and bands. There is a matric
dance and matric finals and the stress that accompanies this. You still do not sleep through the night,
although this can mostly be blamed on the need to pee three times a night as a
result of the quantities of wine you are consuming to survive parenthood. You have nailed the trapdoor shut because,
bugger it, the child is old enough to help your husband beat off burglar with a
stick.
The child is suddenly no longer a child. You find you have time on your hands
again. Real adult time. Time to spend
with your spouse. Time to watch
something on TV other than the Teletubbies or Barney or Hannah Montana or Camp
Rock or MTV. You no longer have to pack clothing to cover all four seasons if
you want to go away for one night. You
wonder what the hell happened to the last 18 years.
And you realise that whatever else those smelly, exhausting, trapdoor-renovating, liver-damaging 18 years have given you (and taken from you), you have produced a being who will go out and conquer the world. Or at least their little corner of it.
You pour another glass of wine and congratulate yourself on a job well done, and then go have a nap. Because that's what it's all about.
But that's just my opinion.
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