Do Not Try This At Home

A friend of mine, and former colleague, visited our offices here in Cleveland recently. She’d left over two years ago for love, an Arts degree, and New York City. She came back with a baby. Sweet Georgia Brown, that baby. PUDGUM CITY, I wanted to squeeze every roll of that baby, she was so stinkin’ cute.

She stopped by my office and we chatted a while. She’s in the early stages of her 40’s, so she started the role of motherhood later than most (a.k.a. later than me, 24, *cough*). One of the questions that came up in our conversation was how different it was to just begin mothering at 40 compared to the 20’s or even the 30’s. Being that I have a few years experience under my belt, I honestly don’t see one kid as work and I told her as much. Now before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, let me just say I’m not belittling mothers of singular babies at all. I was a singular baby and I know raising a child, no matter how many you have, is work. But…

She continued by asking if she should ever consider having another; that having one seemed like enough especially at her age. I totally understood where she was coming from. I’m not her age yet, but I remembered looking at Mooter for a long time after she was born and thinking alright, that was nice. I can go to sleep now. I also told her that, while that feeling lingers for a while, you wake up one morning and while going through your shopping list, you all of a sudden write down “have another baby” like it belongs there because you’re not thinking and your hormones up and snatched your pen out of your hand and did the writing for you because that’s what they do. And you’re all, how did THAT get there, but then you go to the grocery store and a baby is all you can think about because that first one is getting older and losing that new baby smell, and you think, hey, that wasn’t so bad and I can probably do that again and, before you know it, you’re in the aisle for home pregnancy tests “just in case” and you don’t know how you got there.

Yes. It happens just like that.

So I think about all these things. And I weigh them in my brain, letting them marinate, swooshing them around until I let them fall out of my mouth. Because giving a friend advice about things that could ultimately change their lives forever is not something you want to play around with, and it’s not something you talk about casually. And, after a few moments, this is what I told her:

Don’t do it.

I don’t know why I told her that. That’s not what it sounded like swooshing around in the old medulla oblongata. And I went home with that answer, trying to understand why I said it. Then I thought of this:



Because that started off as this:



And this:



And this:



And they were fine. But, like I said, this:



Turned into this:



And I don’t quite remember how it happened. Did you see it? Because in the time it took you to scroll from the picture of calm before they were rolling around on the floor ready to kill each other, was how long it took.

And you can say that they’re kids, and all kids fight. And they’re siblings, and all siblings fight. And I would tell you that I totally get all these things you’re saying, but you’re leaving out one crucial element: they’re girls. Wait. I don’t think I said that right… THEY’RE. GIRLS. Do you understand now? No? OK, let me try it another way. They are girls. That will grow up. Into women. WOMEN! WITH HORMONES! AND MENSTRUAL CYCLES. AND HORMONES. And did I mention THE HORMONES.

And, wouldn’t you know it, my friend and her one kid? That one kid is a girl.

Oh. Sorry.

A GIRL!!!!!!

No, I have no idea why I told her that.