When I was in my mid-twenties I decided that I would adopt a child when I turned thirty-two. I'll turn thirty-two next summer and by all accounts there's little hope for coming through on this promise. I live in a one-room studio and am nowhere near stable enough to convince any adoption agency that I'm parenting material. I'm still single so there's no immediate path for a more organic turn at procreating in the near future. I don't imagine being able to settle down in either respect over the next several years, and I think I can feel the beginnings of all my dead babies drying up inside me.
I'm not even sure if I want kids. When I was younger, having children was just another unspoken expectation. It was hard to imagine a life for myself that didn't involve mirroring the patterns of my parents. When the time came I would get a job which required a briefcase, then I would settle down and marry someone who looks good in a picture frame. A couple of years later a long beaked bird would drop a baby or two down the chimney. I wanted kids in the same way a lot of 8 year-olds want to be doctors: because they're told to want it.
After I graduated from college and had spent a few years working I began to have some extended conversations with my metaphysical self during all those lost moments (staring idly at a red light in rush hour on a Tuesday) that eventually turn into the shape of our lives. "Why am I here?" I asked the stoplight at Pico and La Cienega. Was I meant to be a script reader for a warship talent agency, to one day be able to say that my comments helped shape a Ben Stiller comedy that opened number three at the box office in some distant March?
I decided the truth must be to propagate the world for generations to come with some offspring willing to carry my wisdom forward. From a macro perspective, I imagined having a child would be an opportunity to take all the things I've done right with my life and make them even better. Beneath that, I wanted to hold a baby in my arms. Behind all the fancy rhetoric and strung out syllables, the drive to hold a child was really what I felt sitting in traffic.
It's so easy to romanticize the idea of having children, especially with all the patriarchal weight of culture and tradition. The strength of that romantic ideal can be a huge influencer driving people in a relationship to get even closer, especially after a certain age. Once the uterus starts sending out hormonal smoke signals in a woman's early thirties, the push to just find someone so that they can move forward into the childbearing sorority is powerful. Talking with a friend last night, she described that exact phenomenon. The guy's good enough, but the real prize is the crib and the country home.
I've never understood why men don't express more of the romantic side of having a family. Men seem to accumulate wife, child, and house as presumptive accessories. One of my friends still in LA evaluates women like suits, determining their worth based on how well he can imagine them at his family Christmases and office picnics. It's as if getting a stable wife would be the last criterion for total victory over life.
I could tell an adoption agency that I'd like to raise a child to pass on the love and wisdom that I've collected over the years, to help contribute something positive into the world. I could say that raising a well-educated and financially stable child would be the ultimate validation of my life choices, freeing me to gloat from the porch in my retirement. But the truth is that I'm thirty-one and I just want to hold a baby in my arms.
Maybe I should get a terrier instead. I would if I was willing to pay the extra $300 deposit for pet owners that my landlord requires. Don't tell the adoption people.
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