In my neverending quest to learn about doing something before actually, you know… doing it… I’ve been reading everything I can about having kids. For the past couple of days that’s been “Waiting for Birdy” by Catherine Newman - a chronicle of a year in the life of a woman who has a two-year old and is pregnant with her second child. It’s been likened to Anne Lamott’s “Operating Instructions”. I think there are some similarities, in that both authors write about what it’s like to be a mother without the soft focus and the rose-colored sunglasses. There’s anxiety and anger and boredom. There’s poop and spit-up and barf. And there’s moments of joy and love so large that one wonders how the heart can contain it.

The reason I read them, though, is to find other women like me (slightly insane, rather neurotic) who have kids anyway. In their writing I catch a glimpse of how I might be. Yes, I might worry about my child when they are ill - but this is a common worry. I might spend my free moments googling worst case scenerios on the web, but I won’t be the only one doing it. I’m not alone in my eccentricities (to put it mildly) and this encourages me.

Ms. Newman quotes a Mary Oliver poem “The Summer Day” and these words are an inspiration, a fire under my ass.
“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

This is my one life. I don’t know what comes next, after this. I have my hopes and I have my fears but no one knows for sure. So as far as I know, this is all I have. I have to take what I want, what I really want - I have to make my dreams come true… before it’s too late. As other people have told me: I can’t let my fears stop me. Not the phobia, not the depression, nothing. I have to make it happen. Otherwise I will have squandered this gift. This one wild and precious life.

Posted on January 11th, 2006 by Kat
Filed under: General