20 20 foresight

I wrote this about 6 1/2 years ago, about having kids.

Kids... they're everywhere! You take the train and there they are, sitting on the floor, climbing rails, screeching.. basically making a full nuisance of themselves. You're in a shopping mall, and you're flanked by them, in their baggy "hip" pants and bad English.

As an English teacher, the latter drives me insane and I want to correct their English, but the annoyance is short -lived and amusing to some extent. BUT, as a soon-to-be married person with the option of having children, the former scares the living daylights out of Packrat and I. The romantic notion of having children where they smell nice and are wonderful to hug is there. Even the whole bit where you go googly-eyed when they first call you "mummy" or "daddy", we buy that, lock, stock and barrel. We have no doubt that having children will give you those moments that you will never forget. But like Paul Reiser realised at the beginning of his book, Babyhood, the minute you have kids, you will forever be tired and ugly, as in unattractive from the very little amount of sleep available to you, either because of feeds and changes, or because you're lying there worrying about how the evil world is plotting to devour your child and spit it back at you, rebellious, chain smoking and clad in leather to say the least.

Yes, the slow but crystal clear realisation of how our lives will be forever changed is dawning upon us. There shall be endless sacrifice. Here are some examples.
1) We will never get to eat in a restaurant peacefully again unless we inflict our kids on someone else.
2) We will not be able to fight on the top of our voices lest we want to pay for a lifetime of therapy.
3) We will no longer be able to afford that Buffy or West Wing box side unless we're content with midget children brought up on Weetbix and milk.
4) We will not be able to pack up and go away on holiday unless we a) see 1) or endure the logistical nightmare of trying to bring a child on a trip, particularly long haul.
5) We will be the most boring people who only talk about their kids
6) We will spend our time at parties, if we're ever invited, either running after the kids or boring the tears out of our friends by being 5).

How insightful and correct I was all those years ago despite not having a clue what parenthood was about. And strangely enough, if someone asked me now whether they should have kids immediately after they get married, I'd still issue the same list of sacrifices and ask if they were ready to do the following. Of course, on hindsight, I would add that even if they did manage to do 1 and 4, they'd also have to contend with a tremendous amount of guilt and whether they are able to handle that is akin to being shouted down by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.



Except it'd be...

Conscience: You wanna go out?
You: I think I'm entitled to go out.
Conscience: You sure you can handle the guilt?
You: I'm entitled to freedom.
Conscience: You can't handle the guilt!

And have our lives changed as markedly as I'd so ominously predicted 6 1/2 years ago? Yes and in many more ways than those listed. Then I thought about how much sacrifice having one kid would be to our lifestyles. Never in my then existence did I imagine that I would have to at some point prepare to integrate 3 children into our lifestyles.

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