the no sayer

After having read Shabby Chic Homeschooling, I am led to a very deep thought:

While I was pregnant with my oldest, at 18.5 yrs of age, I saw a Maury Povich show interviewing 12 and 13 year old girls about why they wanted to become pregnant. Being a pregnant teen myself, I was too tired to get off the couch and change the channel watched it.

An audience member stood up and asked one of the girls (who in her defense was biologically mature, and since humans are the only animal species that waits an entire generation AFTER maturity to reproduce, probably did have some internal stirrings to procreate... but I digress) "Why do you want to have a baby?"

The girl gets a very wistful look on her face and says quite naively "A baby is just someone to love." to which the audience (older and wiser no doubt) groaned and roared about how foolish she was.

I decided at that point to try and think of a better answer; and what I came up with has stuck with me, until now. The grand reason, I thought of was "Because the world is a wonderful place and I'd like to share it with a child." I thought, until today, that was the perfect answer. I wonder, still, what the audience would have though of that one.

Even today, if I heard that answer I would applaud. It still sounds good.

My new answer, though, would be "Because the world is a wonderful place and you can see more of it through the eyes of a child."

My crazy busy kids have dragged me, kicking, screaming and shaking my finger into the wonders of life. When did I get so old that I'm not even interested in going into the tree house? Why am I not having a crazy hat party? Why don't I have a list of 50 summer camps I just can't choose between?

To my credit, I definitely do keep myself busy with various things of my own (like this blog) but most of my hours are spent listening to my kids constantly explain what they want to do; parties, vacations, teaching a kids seminar, hosting a summer day camp in our backyard, having a bake sale, a hawaiian luau, opening up a boarding school, adopting Chinese orphans, painting murals in their bedroom, digging a tunnel under the canal to the neighbors house, opening a franchise lemonade stand business, building a (small, mom) roller coaster in the yard, publishing a newspaper just for sisters, writing children's books about sibling rivalry, inventing time machines... saying "no."


I plan to finish this deep thought later but the girls have planned to go roller skating now.