Kim and I look back in amusement at our plans of how we were going to be parents and live our lives just like we lived them before...slightly modified, perhaps, but essentially doing the same things and just adding a baby to the mix. Planning has nothing to do with being a parent. I never planned for how hard it would really be, and I also never planned for how much I would love Jake and enjoy being with him and watching him learn and grow. It's the teacher and camp counselor in me, I guess. It amazes me to watch him develop mentally and physically. And to my very soul I have silently adopted the stereotypical parental belief that, well, my kid is unusually brilliant.
People ask, ``If you had it to do over again, would you?'' The honest answer is, ``No''; I wouldn't have a kid unless I knew it was going to be Jake. I can't imagine doing this for and with anyone but Jake.
Of course, there are people who do continue living their lives just as they planned, and such things happen just as someone usually wins the lottery each week; you hear about it, and aren't surprised it happens, but how many winners do you know? Parenthood is a cliché. I believe that the people who know the clichés are true end up having the easiest time. But people like us, who feel oh-so intellectually superior and say ``Ahhhh, that's soooo cliché, it'll be nothing like that. For us it will be different,'' will have the hardest time because we stubbornly refuse to recognize that all the clichés are true, and feel that we should somehow be exempt from a few million years of evolutionary genetics. The choice to have a kid has nothing to do with higher brain functions (which are relative newcomers compared to biological reproduction). You willingly introduce a wildly unpredictable variable into what may have been a comparably stable, controllable, and even predictable previous life.
And, of course, that is part of the draw and excitement of the choice we made.
Being a parent means not having the time to be squeamish. Do I smell baby poop somewhere on my body or clothes? Oh well, maybe I'll deal with that this evening. Jake is ready to spew the mix of peas, beans, potatoes, oats, popsicle, milk, juice, and unidentified floor specks that he has unsuccessfully partially digested for the last three hours and there isn't a sink or bucket nearby? That's what parental hands and shirts are for.
Being a parent means having a strange desire to talk in the third person. I have carried on entire conversations with Jake along the lines of: ``Is that for daddy? Would Jake like to go with daddy outside for a walk?'' Schizophrenia as a coping mechanism.
There is some yet-unidentified gene that gives parents the disposition to buy a video camera to micro-document their baby's life. This must have caused a lot of stress in parents' lives before video cameras were invented. I imagine a pair of australiopithican parents with a newborn wondering why they felt this urge to watch their child through a piece of hollowed-out wood.
While driving back from an astronomy observing run, I heard the song ``Cat in The Cradle'' on the radio, and got all choked up and teary-eyed! Jeez, what kind of chemical changes in your brain does having a child induce???
When we tell people we will have only one child, the most common response is ``Oh, how sad!'' closely followed by ``Well, he'll be spoiled.'' Yet, in our informal poll of people who have been single kids, we find that all except one were completely happy not having siblings, and in our judgment, they didn't seem spoiled or felt overly responsible or insecure or any of the other aspects that people have projected on Jake and his situation. Kim and I always planned to have zero or one kid. Of course, ``zero or one'' is a significantly unstable equilibrium...having zero, you can always move into the state of having one, but once you have one kid, there is no going back to zero. So, ``zero or one'' almost inevitably ends up being ``one''. Instabilities seem to be the key point of parenthood. So any ``only'' kids out there, we would love to hear from you, and for anyone else who feels sorry for Jake or us, feel free to send a condolence card, and let's move on.
Joel Parker
(joel@boulder.swri.edu)
