Tick Tock

Who knew?  The maternal clock is not a myth.  I always thought it sounded a little far-fetched, maybe an excuse for women who wanted to settle (sell-out?).  This may sound uncharitable, but it was so foreign.  Until very recently I was not sure I ever wanted kids of my own.

I just spent five minutes crying over photos of my dear friend (and ex-boyfriend) and his girlfriend and their newborn baby.  The way they looked at each other and they way they look at their baby was overwhelming.  It's not that he once loved me, and it's not that I want a baby now, but something inside me twinged...   I want that one day, and I want one day to be not so far away.

I spent last week in a house on a beach in North Carolina on vacation with a family that I've known for a long time.  We adopted each other when I was a girl and the neighbor girl decided we would be friends, and now that we're grown I'm getting to know the neighbor brother I grew up with in a whole new way.  He has two kids with whom I spent days playing on the beach and nights reading books to these beautiful blondes, and it makes me sad to not know how much they'll remember the next time I see them.  I feel drawn to their father in part because I see him as that, a father, a loving and devoted father.  I see in him how I want the father to my children to be.  Until now, this is not a quality that I ever would have looked for or particularly valued in a man.  But now it seems so inherent to the quality of the person as a whole I can't imagine not taking this into consideration.

So what now?  I guess for now I make sure to be really careful about birth control and start thinking more than a year out, so one day soon I can not be careful about birth control.