A Family or Bust

I sometimes think that I am ready to start a family. I see commercials on TV with kids running off to school, eating Toaster Strudel or carrying supplies fresh from Wal-Mart, and I think 'that could be me.' I could be that Mom, still attractive and smiling as her kids catch the bus. I've had these thoughts before. But they were more feelings than thoughts. They were the feelings that a woman gets when, for a split second, her maternal instinct makes its way from deep down inside her and into her brain. Only now they're not feelings, they are thoughts. Still, I have to evaluate where these thoughts are coming from. Do they come from the place inside me that wishes Rick and I could move beyond the place we are right now? That tug in my heart that says 'OK, it's been a slice, but what's next?' If that's the case then maybe I don't really want kids, maybe I just want to move to the next level and the marriage fantasy is so played out by now my subconscious has moved onto kids.

It's like I'm living out that path I wish our relationship would take in my mind. It started with the proposal, but he managed to take all the magic out of that - what almost two years ago? Then it was the wedding. I played that over and over again in my head so many times that I've actually begun to forget what I want it to be like. People ask me what my colors are or what it will be like because "we know you have it all planned out." And you know what? I can't answer them anymore. I know I had it all planned out at some point, but I'm pass that now. To me we've gone to Hawaii for our Honeymoon - or was it Puerto Vallarta? We've come home back to the condo, but within a year or so we've found a nice house in the area - either Berwyn or Forest Park. Once we get the house I can get pregnant. I could never imagine having a child in this place.

Now I'm stuck on the pregnancy. I imagine myself as my mother, in those pictures I see of her from when she was pregnant with me. I imagine it being warm, maybe summer. I'm sitting on the couch, arms and legs splayed across the cushions and since I'm the last one of the 'siblings' to have a baby everyone thinks I'm so cute. Then there are block parties and birthdays. Camping trips and graduations where for the first time in my life, it's not about me. Forget about it. By time Rick finally marries me I'll have taken us clear through retirement.