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spryngThere's a bird scratching at the bottom of its cage, seeking for something to hoard, to scavenge, with which to gather and build. But build what? The bird doesn't know, it's just thrumming with this latent energy, this energy that keeps it from sitting happily atop its perch, this energy that has insinuated into all the little cracks of the bird's life. And it'll keep searching, keep scratching and seeking until that energy dissipates, unfulfilled, or it builds a nest.
Doug's cockatiel is going through that right now and hearing about her confused search for building materials, I empathized. I feel that energy, that hormonal need, bubbling up through the cracks of my life, demanding my attention. I want to scratch out a permanent home, fill it up with soft and colorful nesting materials, and lay an egg. Or, well, the human equivalent thereof.
It was confusing at first, I didn't know what that energy was, why I felt an even deeper need to fluff up my home and feed people and keep them safe, until we went to visit Lady's sister and her new niece over Christmas. Lady held her month-old niece and smiled at me with such contentment that all of the confusion was brought sharply into focus.
Oh, I thought with budding dread, this is what they meant.
They - those people - family members, older friends - who always gave me that annoyingly knowing smile whenever I professed my intention to never have kids. Nope, never, not going to happen. Wait until you're 25 and see, they said. Hormones, they intoned like it was enough to describe and explain everything.
All right, fine, hormones. I get it now. I'm nesting and thinking very very hard about whether or not I actually want them. Part of me is still holding out, screaming about expectations and how I should dash them savagely. But the other part of me is actually pretty conservative. I want to get married - it's important to me. I also want to change my name. And I actually want to have kids. And - most disturbingly - I could see myself as a very happy stay-at-home mom.
Not for a while, not until Lady graduates from grad school and we move again, wherever life takes us. But then, yes.
In the meantime, I'll just have to figure out a way to channel my nesting energy. So if you need your house cleaned and your meals cooked and your laundry folded - hello!
Doug's cockatiel is going through that right now and hearing about her confused search for building materials, I empathized. I feel that energy, that hormonal need, bubbling up through the cracks of my life, demanding my attention. I want to scratch out a permanent home, fill it up with soft and colorful nesting materials, and lay an egg. Or, well, the human equivalent thereof.
It was confusing at first, I didn't know what that energy was, why I felt an even deeper need to fluff up my home and feed people and keep them safe, until we went to visit Lady's sister and her new niece over Christmas. Lady held her month-old niece and smiled at me with such contentment that all of the confusion was brought sharply into focus.
Oh, I thought with budding dread, this is what they meant.
They - those people - family members, older friends - who always gave me that annoyingly knowing smile whenever I professed my intention to never have kids. Nope, never, not going to happen. Wait until you're 25 and see, they said. Hormones, they intoned like it was enough to describe and explain everything.
All right, fine, hormones. I get it now. I'm nesting and thinking very very hard about whether or not I actually want them. Part of me is still holding out, screaming about expectations and how I should dash them savagely. But the other part of me is actually pretty conservative. I want to get married - it's important to me. I also want to change my name. And I actually want to have kids. And - most disturbingly - I could see myself as a very happy stay-at-home mom.
Not for a while, not until Lady graduates from grad school and we move again, wherever life takes us. But then, yes.
In the meantime, I'll just have to figure out a way to channel my nesting energy. So if you need your house cleaned and your meals cooked and your laundry folded - hello!
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Date: 2012-05-09 09:31 pm (UTC)I've suddenly discovered that I like kids. Every now and then, I think about whether I want to raise one. I keep coming back to—no, I want to play with them and teach them and go on hikes with them; I want to be their subversive queer uncle. I don't want to be a parent. But I'm no longer as emphatic about ruling it out, and I could see myself part-time co-parenting or similar.
There's some good parenting/foster-parenting reading here: http://sharonastyk.com/category/parenting/ Sharon Astyk is one of my very favorite moms-I've-never-met, right up there with the lady I glimpsed at the Aquarium the other week who was having a wonderful, reasonable conversation with her young boy, who had just finished having an absolute throwing-self-on-the-floor tantrum, about how it feels to be frustrated, and what kind of things might be frustrating him, and how he could go about dealing with those things in ways other than pitching a fit.
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Date: 2012-05-10 05:04 am (UTC)Hey, you can have my future spawn. We'll give them to you and Lady when they're preteens, and you can return them when it's time for them to graduate high school. Deal?
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Date: 2012-05-10 08:32 am (UTC)You can totally clean my house in exchange for black and white cookies ;-) J/k!