Babies

Can’t get this one out of my head tonight…I think it might be the saddest song I know. The kind of sorrow hidden behind soothing pleasantness, too great to be viewed directly..

Now that a good number of my peers have been drawn into the strange foreign land of parenting, I find myself under the queer knee-jerk reaction of…jealousy? A feeling of being left behind? Something of the sort. There’s long been a strange difference…between what they say one should do to have a fulfilling life, and what my instincts have told me to do to have one. The inconsistency has always been something of a pain in the ass, as I’ve never been able to trust anyone to make any of my decisions for me, and having to be both the grounds and the caretaker can be quite exhausting. I see now why people turn to God in the middle of their lives…not because they think they’ve stumbled into any kind of truth, but because they are just too tired to continue making decisions for themselves. My grandfather tried explaining this to me once, though I wasn’t of mind to understand at the time; there comes a time when you realize that things are just too far out of your hands.

There is something sexually attractive about mothers, though it might be too simple and basic to pin-point. I could talk about how it’s the way the act of parenting forces a woman to project her attention outward more often than inward, and the natural air of confidence that comes with that…or I could mention the inexplicable cozy smugness that they seem to possess as well, as though privy to some kind of secret; you think you’ve seen a human being strained to the breaking point? You aint seen nothin, kid. I think there is a touch of jealousy there…as it seems as though the act of having a child would completely reduce a person to zero, allowing them to then rise from such to aspire to soaring levels of appreciation and satisfaction.