You don’t have to have a kid.

Seriously.   I know how societal pressures are, especially from your parents who may be the type that are just dying to get their hands on a baby and spoil it rotten.    Some can be sweet and gentle about it, but I’ve heard stories of those who are downright, “You will give me a grandchild, NOW!” to which I have no rational answer that doesn’t involve propping my mouth open like a codfish.

You don’t have to have a kid.

It’s hard when all your peers are making strides in life and you aren’t keeping up with the Joneses — I know.    When everyone has a snuggle buddy and you are the third wheel, you are left out.    When everyone else seems to be engaged, it’s hard not to have diamond lust and to be picking out china.   And when they’re all getting married, I’ve sat right along with you in a pew and wished I was the one standing at the top of the aisle and not them.    It sucks.    The desire to have kids can be even worse when everyone around you is pregnant or blowing raspberries into tiny bellies.

But…you don’t have to have a kid.

I have huge amounts of respect for two groups of people — those that are parents or want to be parents and love and adore their children (or their future children), and those that have said, “I never, ever want in a million years to have children and I’m not going to and I’m ok with that.”     It’s insanely harder to make that second statement, but bless every one of you for bucking society and doing what’s right for you and not what everyone says you must.

Really — you don’t have to have a kid.

The first group of people really bother me are those who fall victim to peer pressure and have a child, either because they receive pressure from relatives or friends or simply via society and marketing, but in reality, they didn’t actually want to have children as badly as everyone else wanted them to, and now they are miserable or at least not nearly as happy as they might have been otherwise.    I realize, there’s a lot of accidents out there — and they happen — and plenty of people who thought they would never want a kid, but once they did, they love it.    But there’s plenty of folks who took the leap for bad reasons.    And plenty more who will do so in the future.

I’d like to tell all these folks — you don’t have to have a kid.

The second group is parents who already have a child, thought it would be all roses and sunshine farts, and have found out that parenting and child-rearing is tough, thankless, and really cramping their style or patience.  And yet – YET — despite this personal hell that they’ve created, they want to have MORE! What the hell!?    You mean you haven’t had enough of pulling out your hair, feeling like a piece of microwaved crap, or having to grip onto your wine glass tightly to avoid mentally cracking?   Usually this is a result of — you guessed it!  Peer pressure.     Everyone else has two kids, so we should, too.    Or:  “I love being pregnant!”    “I love babies, just not toddlers.”   Or any other mind-bendingly stupid sentiment.

Get a reality check, folks — you don’t have to have a kid.   Or another one.

I am not anti-children, nor am I anti-parents.    And I fully appreciate that some parents are simply uncertain until they actually DO it and then they are lovely and wonderful and their kids are awesome.    I’m not trying to discourage people who are simply scared of making that leap and aren’t sure how they will do — heck, I shat myself daily until I got into fatherhood and realized I could actually do it and that I really, truly did love it.

I am encouraging those folk out there who, in their heart of hearts, really know that they should never be parents — it just doesn’t suit them — or those parents that have found out that it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be to simply Think.   Consider.   Ponder.   And make the right decision, no matter what anyone else says.     Do the best for you and for your children, conceived or unconceived, and make the right choice, not just the popular one.

I, at least, am on your side.    Because you don’t have to have a kid unless you really want to.

I have obtained for myself a regular little helper, a little guy who’s always around when I’m trying to get supper going or dishes washed at night before settling down for a good game of trains.   Once lured by the sweet serenades of PBS kids’ shows, he now finds himself irresistably drawn to the kitchen and the perch ontop of his little red stool, watching intently everything that happens and commenting on it all the while.

We were so engaged the other night as I worked up a batch of Grandma Farwell’s Hearty Split Pea Soup, one of those soul foods that is perfect on a colder night and brings back memories of a small slice of something homey in the strangeness that was four years of college.  Keston had assumed his normal place on his stool at my side, watching intently as I whittled away at the various ingredients and explained them out loud, which he would repeat.

And so we put peas (peeees), a ham bone (meaties), chopped onion (on-on), and carrots (care-rot) into the crockpot along with some water.   Then I opened the spice cupboard and pulled out a bay leaf and some thyme.    I looked over and he had a very concerned look on his face.   He looked up at me.

“Leafs?”

I laughed.     “Yeah, buddy, they’re special leaves called, ‘spices’.   They make things taste good.”

“Daddy….leafs???”   His confusion was pretty clear that he couldn’t figure out why I was putting leaves into our food.   I thought for a moment.

“Well, they smell good,” I explained.    This brought from him a wuffing noise as he pulsed air through his nose.    He has always smelled so good (babies, toddlers, parents, you know what I mean) and so sometimes for a goof we go and rapidly sniff him on his cheeks and neck which usually gets a peal of giggles out of him.   “Right!”  I said.

I proceeded to get down the container of cinnamon.       “Here, Kes, smell this.”  I showed him by sniffing it first with the same whuffing action and then I stuck it under his nose.

He gave it a shot.    “Mmmmmm!!” he smiled and hummed afterwards.     We then tried several others — basil, dried onion, parsley, thyme, and salt, just because I wanted to show him that they didn’t ALL smell.     He clearly liked some and was turned away by others, but it was a cute and interesting educational exercise.

We got done with that and I stirred everything together in the crockpot before putting it in the base and turning it on for a long, slow simmer.    “Seeee!    Seeee!”    I get interrupted about 300 times every night cooking because his vantage point from the stool isn’t enough and he wants a better look.    So, I hoist him up in my arms and he leans way over and gives the stew a long, hard, investigative gaze.

He turns back to me and points.     “Daddy….LEAFS!?”

Emeril, eat your heart out.

A little bit of fun outside on a sunny Saturday afternoon with a volleyball can’t be all that bad, right?   My son, Keston, thought it’d be a fine time to practice his ball-handling skills and understanding of basic physics.

And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
When you comin’ home Dad?
I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then son
You know we’ll have a good time then

This song has always brought a lump to my throat, no matter when in my life I have heard it (and yes, I prefer the Ugly Kid Joe version, thanks).    It’s not that I had a bad father when growing up — I had a great father.    But now — I have a whole new perspective.

I worry all the time about how good of parent I am being…or not.   Am I being a good Daddy?   Am I spending enough time with him, teaching him, playing with him, showing him enough love and happiness and direction and acceptance?   And more importantly — does he think so?   I know I’m not the absent father of the above song but…in this my insecurities run deep.

Sometimes…sometimes the very act of being apart from him completely shreds my heart into little flaps of pain blowing in the breeze, even when it’s a necessary or justified reason.    I go to work every day, work hard, sometimes long days, because the better job I have, the higher I can get, the better I can do — the more I can provide and give him a good, happy, warm, and safe life.    Of course, there’s a balance — there’s a limit to how much money and so forth can give that nothing but love, caring, and time can fill.     So where do I strike it?   I struggle with that daily.    Ideally, all we need is love.   Realistically, we need so much more than only that.

The way he runs to me when I come home, arms outstretched, huge grin on his face, is at the same time both mind-blowingly wonderful and heart-wrenchingly awful because as good as it feels to have his love and acceptance and desire to see his daddy and to get his hugs and play time, it rips at me to think about what he wonders when I’m not there.   Does he get upset that I’m gone?    Kids breed on familiarity and security – do I wreak his world a tiny bit every time I step out that door and drive away?

Keston, Keston — what shall we do with your daddy who sits here with tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat, considering all the decisions that must be made and things that must be done, both with you and without you, and how to best place my love, devotion, and committment to your well-being such that you will grow up and think, “My dad?   Yeah.   He really loved me.”

Whatever happens, whatever we each must do to make our way in this sometimes confusing and conflicted world, no matter how many times I can and will screw up and not do things right, please always understand that I did the absolute best, to the ends of my very existence, to try to be the best for you.    Because I love you, my son, more than my feeble mind and body can ever show.

– Daddy

Happy May Day, everyone!   And, happily enough, today marks the 18th month since my life and heart were gratefully pierced through by the indefatigable shard of happiness that is my son, Keston.

Naturally, to celebrate we enlisted the help of a talented and flexible Sears photographer to capture his countenance for perpetuity.   Although it took two sessions since aborting naptime the first time became a bit of a trial, I think we got some pretty good takes.    Now if only his Adidas contract would go through.   Gotta get on that.

Happy year-and-a-half, Bug-Bug.     I love you so much!

(click on each image to get a large, up-close-and-personal picture)