I am unable to produce descendants at a decent age…
When i was fresh out of High School my first child was conceived. In the Photo on the left i am a whopping 18 years of age. My first wife and i began our “adult” lives as statistics used to pressure parents, teachers, and youth alike about the virtues of safe-sex or abstinence.
We were young and foolish with zero clue of what we were getting into! We struggled through years of scraping by and raising kids (2 more followed the first one). It was tough. Having kids that young often equals a lot of sacrifices, and it meant sacrifices for us. My tentative plans to go fart-around at college with my friends was traded for full-time work. She finished up her senior year in an off-campus facility for delinquents (because being pregnant is basically the same thing as selling heroin!). They claimed it was for her protection, but really it was the 90s and can you imagine how unseemly it would’ve been having an impregnated human getting education with the normal people? (we really do need to establish a standard font for sarcasm)
Those early years were some of the hardest years of my life. Hard work, small kids, feeling trapped in a continuous circle of work, pay bills, work, repeat…
But i don’t think i’d trade them in for anything. i got three amazing kids out of the deal. Smart, witty, creative, funny human beings who will have to pick out a nursing home for me one day!
For the last twenty-plus years i’ve encouraged myself regularly with the thought that they’ll all be grown and i’ll be fairly young, or at least “Not-Old”. Not-Old and free to travel, to ride across the desert on a motorcycle, to jet-ski across one of the smaller oceans, maybe book passage to the arctic and watch icebergs calve with my own eyes!
Then on Father’s Day of this year i had a revelation… i looked at my wife… This amazing dynamo of a human who can just power through things, this being of amazing ability who can set a plan in place and move heaven and earth to make it happen, this tiny person who joined forces with me to live out a life together, a life where we go places, live in 20 different places across the country, see the world… i looked at her and i KNEW…
She’s Pregnant!
It wasn’t long that it was confirmed, by not just a single test either- a whole flotilla of tests and an official doctor’s office test! To Quote Slartibartfast*, “Best laid plans of mice.”
So here we are. Like Abraham & Sarah or Jay & Gloria Pritchett: Old(ish) and pregnant! (The photo on the right is me now, at 42) It makes me think back to discovering i was going to be a dad the first time. My life was RUINED, all my plans destroyed! i had that moment again this time around as well.
But then i reflected: Progeny batch 1.0 are all some of the best things to ever happen in my life. My heart is at it’s fullest when i’m together with my entire little clan (which as they get older happens less and less). So Progeny batch 2.0 should be equally amazing!
I’ve been young and i’ve been old… and both times i went and made babies without meaning to!
- From Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: if you haven’t read it… read it!
Grasshopperking(0) 