Wanting a child

This post was written while I was in Japan- about halfway through my trip - I just didn't get around to publishing it until now.

You see kids a lot in Japan- and for some reason, they all look really happy. You also see moms, with their kids in Japan- a ton of them wearing those ergo baby backpacks. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t speak the language here so all I see is physical affection between moms and kids or all I see is pleasant interaction because I don’t understand a word they’re saying to each other. But I am seeing a lot of moms with kids and what I see is love, affection, happiness, joy. It’s like these little running-around-bundles-of-life followed by these nurturing, supporting, grownups. And those little bundles of life seem to actually make the moms smile and laugh; like the moms seem kind of resigned, but in a good way, to just supporting those kids to be little bundles of life: exploring water and birds and steps and the physical realities of life with a sense of wonder, discovery, and pure joy.

Last night, I was thinking about how I knew that I would never want to raise a child as a single parent, that I knew how difficult it was to raise a child on your own. But that difficulty, that sense of being overwhelmed or trapped by caring for children, wasn’t matching what I was seeing in Japan. I started to realize that my association with parenting was based on stories I had about parenting, about what children are to their parents.

My mom died when I was young, and my father never remarried. At the time, people were often surprised by this: single parents were uncommon in the seventies, especially a single father. My brother and I often laugh about the fact that everyone seemed surprised that my dad hadn’t shipped us off to boarding school. And, to be honest, the only stories we read when we were growing up that actually matched our experience- a mother dying, a father “left” with the children- were those Grimm fairy tales. And in those tales, the story was that the children were a burden to the father, that he had no choice but to marry an evil stepmother, and that the kids were a constant source of strife between the two, with the stepmother trying to either kill or lose the children in the forest somewhere. My father never said we were a burden to him but society, fairy tales, and the looks on the faces of others when I told them that my father was raising me on his own lead me to believe that I was darn lucky not to be sent away and that I’d better earn my keep if I wanted to stay around.

I hadn't noticed this before, how much this story affected my perception of raising a child. But what I also noticed was that that association, was changing. As I saw all these moms running around, loving their children, I started to see that parents can love their children, that they can enjoy raising them, that it can be a pleasure to support another person to just be, just grow, just discover this world and who they are in it.

I also noticed how the kids seemed to make their parents laugh and smile. I saw that kids can be a source of happiness for their parents, that their wonder and silliness and cluelessness about the world can sometimes bring this same sense of joy and wonder to their parents. The moms just seemed to like running around behind their kids, waiting while they touched water or chased ducks- like it was okay for kids to be just doing what they are doing and that the moms were okay supporting them- that the kids weren't keeping the moms from getting things done.

Who knows, maybe all these moms were totally thinking about their shopping lists or the friends they were meeting or the troubles they were having with their husbands- I didn't see any of that. All I saw was love and joy.
And that made me want to be a mom again. It made me see that parents can enjoy parenting, that I can have a child and it won't be a burden to me, it can bring me joy and life and I'm sure it can bring me suffering too but that it isn't only about this thing- being put on you- because someone died.
I think that really is what I felt like. I think I really did think I was a burden to my dad. He never said this and I know that if I asked him he would say that I was never a burden to him, that raising me was what he did, he was my father and for all the stuff that came with it, he did it, we did it together.
He might even say that I brought him joy- though that would be atypical of him, not because I didn't bring him joy but because he doesn't say things like that- I don't know that he's ever uttered the phrase "brings me joy." But he actually has said that he takes credit for raising me (since I was the youngest so he still played a big role in raising me after my mom died) and that it is a good credit- that he thinks that I am the combination of the best of him and my mom.
So maybe my six year old self made him laugh a few times or that when my needs came up and interrupted the things he needed to do as a single parent of three children, maybe it was okay, maybe he was okay with it.