becoming mortal

My college roommate Carrie taught me the art of the scrapbook. We would go out, us and half the floor of our dorm, go out to parties and bars and places I never perfectly described to my mother so she wouldn't worry. Then, the day after, or the day after that if we couldn't lift our hung-over heads from our pillows, we dropped off film for one-hour development and waited. Pictures spread all over our tiny room's floor, and magazines and scissors at the ready, we filled magnetic-page albums with proof of our lives. I remembered the introduction page to my album documenting the year after I graduated college, and I would like to share it:

  "On July 16, 2001, I set out for Richmond, Virginia hoping to see the big city, tall skyscrapers, millions of lights, and even more people. In other words, to find everything Blacksburg could not be because even after being there only four years, small is small. 


 I thought how incredible it would be, diploma in hand, to get a "real job," room with Jennifer Clark, go out every weekend in a town of more than 10 bars. But I never thought that I wouldn't be able to find a job and without a job, it doesn't matter how many bars a city has to offer. Besides, I was a college graduate - doesn't that count for anything? Not really, unless you have the golden word of employment: experience. 


 Bartending in college may have given me extra cash and free drinks in Blacksburg, but here in Richmond it became what I used to do. And Virginia Tech became the school I used to attend. And Blacksburg became the place I used to live. 


 Suddenly, rushing towards the real world, towards forty-hour work weeks, bedtime at 10:00 p.m. and still being tired when the alarm rings at 7:00 a.m., towards medical insurance, dental insurance, car maintenance, paying rent, researching long-distance calling plans, and dropping off dry cleaning seemed second rate, the way you view Busch Gardens when your parents promised Disneyland. Spending eight hours a day at a job fit for a high school dropout so I can pay rent on the apartment that I never spend time in because I have to go to work. 


 And then I remember back when college was new, and sleeping in meant that you didn't see the sun that day. When going downtown on a Tuesday night wasn't frowned upon, but encouraged because class wasn't until noon, so why not? When the only thing that made life worth living was the fact that your 21st birthday was only 3 months, 2 weeks, and 27 days away. When responsibility was considered something that people with 4.0s and children had, definitely not people like us. 


 But you know what? Life isn't lived looking behind you, wanting to change certain things, hide little details, or wishing you could go back. Have you ever walked looking behind you? Eventually, and sooner than later, you either run into someone or something. So, my eyes are looking out and around, memorizing my nephew's hands that will never be that little again, studying the tree in front of my apartment that rivals any tree on Skyline Drive, looking in a mirror at the face that uses wrinkle cream and zit cream every night, and neither is doing its job. But that's life. So, why write an introduction to this scrapbook and not the others? Well, this is one from the first year of my life as an (almost) adult." 


 I remember when I wrote this, because at the time life felt very long to me. Everything up until that point seemed to last forever - getting to middle school, first dance, first kiss, driving, drinking, graduation, college. It felt like I had been in those places forever. It was a time when life was easy to remember.

 I told the hub the other day that I know why some people choose not to have children. Simply, it makes them immortal. We all have friends, family, siblings, parents, co-workers even, that continue to live and change along with us. New job, marriages, divorces, moves to this state or that - we all change but the thing is, we're all changing at the same time. There is an inherent selfishness to a childless life, indulgent of what we want, when we want it, whether we need it or not. But having children is different. I don't care how hard your job is, or how difficult your new college is, or law school, or how long your commute in a new city is. Nothing will alter your world so profoundly, and so permanently, as having a child. Because unlike most things in our lives, children are forever.

And it's with that realization that we parents become mortal. Because with that realization we also become aware of our own responsibility in not just producing a child, but producing a child that is a benefit to society, a society of which we won't be a part of in the future. A child that contributes without destruction, a child that seeks to learn and educate, a child that desires to make things more beautiful, more clean, more more. 

A legacy. And cruelly, while we are coming up to an age where dreams are scrapped for reality. I can no longer move to New York City. Or become a new artist rep for a record company. Or compose music. Or travel the world. Regardless of if I ever actually wanted to do those things, I am now at a place in my life where I have to shake those ideas off the "to-do" list. Not bitterly, please understand. And certainly not all dreams. The real dreams, the ones you hold to your core, the ones that make you get up in the morning - they persist. It's the fanciful, what-if dreams that get replaced. 

 I am becoming increasingly aware of how fast time is moving now. I see it in Britton's monthly pictures (time for that again?? We just took it!) and in how the hubs and I discuss when Britton will start preschool and in ordering big girl beds and Britton using the big potty all on her own without a peep about needing help. I hear it when strangers remind me to "enjoy every minute! They grow up so fast!" and I nod and say, "They sure do!" because it is actively happening in front of me.   And I know that there will come a time that I am no longer in her world - when I will pass the baton and hope I did it all right.