The primary time I ever held a child, I knew instantly: I’m going to have one in every of these sometime. This thought was someway preposterous, on condition that I used to be round 11 on the time. However as I cradled my brand-new toddler cousin (whereas sitting down, after all, on condition that I completely shouldn’t have been trusted to guard her comfortable head alone two ft) and listened to my dad’s girlfriend change postpartum chitchat with my aunt—”Is she sleeping?” “Are you sleeping?”—I knew I ultimately wished in on this humorous little sorority of maternal knowledge that, as an solely baby, I’d by no means beforehand recognized existed.
My more-than-passing curiosity in infants solely grew as I bought older; not solely did I get beginning doula-certified as a part of a requirement for a Reproductive Justice seminar I took in school (no, I don’t know ship your child, however sure, I might be nice at passing the time by facilitating dialog concerning the Kardashians within the supply room), however I spent most of my undergrad summers nannying for a similar Brooklyn household. This household had one son on the time, a cheerful little cherub of a nine-month-old after I met him who someway turned two, then three, then nearly 4 by the point I graduated, and I’m nonetheless in awe at his mother’s extraordinarily unfussy method with him.
I barely had any toddler expertise after I began, but as an alternative of taking one take a look at my clunky Doc Martens and tattered Goodwill witch clothes and displaying me the door, the newborn’s mother inspired me to take her son wherever I happy, from the Coney Island Aquarium to the Bareburger on Courtroom Avenue. I might buckle him into the Snugli, fill a tote bag with diapers and puffed cereal, and we’d be off, him squealing with pleasure each time we handed a rubbish truck and me vowing to be precisely this type of loving but chill mom sometime when—not “if”—I had children.
I saved nannying on and off after school, and the extra chaotic and unstable my private life was, the extra positive I used to be of my dream of motherhood. Having by no means had a severe relationship, it was weirdly simpler to image myself as a someday-single mother than to think about sharing the accountability of getting a child with any of the assorted fuckboys, ghosting-prone ladies, and nonbinary commitment-avoiders I dated in my 20s. “I desire a child by the point I’m 35,” I might proudly declare to anybody who requested all through the years, even referencing my sureness about my need to mother or father in my memoir. I might learn books by the likes of Sheila Heti, Michelle Tea, and Meaghan O’Connell about ambivalence towards parenthood and really feel drawn to their honesty, but unable to acknowledge myself. I won’t have recognized how I’d conceive, who I’d mother or father with, or how I’d pay for actually any of it, however I knew parenting was for me. Till…it possibly wasn’t?
