Last night Ray and I got caught caught up in a discussion about whether we’ll stay in our current house or if we’ll move when kidlet gets older. We live on a busy-ish street, but have a big yard and are a short walking distance to several resaurants, the library, the grade school, a children’s museum, two movie theatres and the rail trail. We’ve got some work to do on it, but nothing too daunting. Overall, we couldn’t think of an area of town we’d rather live, so we’ll likely stay for a while.
Where it spiraled was into a discussion about when the right age was to walk to school by himself. And then what were the rules for curfew. How do we feel about video games. Allowance or not? And then how do we get Pinchy to eat his vegetables. We talked about how things had been for us as children, what worked, what didn’t, what we’d change, what we’d keep. And what it came down to in several of the instances was figuring out who the kid actually IS and what will work with him.
And that hit me like a ton of bricks. One of those major revelations. They seem to come fast and furious lately. These bubbly feelings in my stomach are a person. Not just some parasite, but an actual living person who will be a blend of our DNAs with a personality all his own. And while we have guesses about what he’ll enjoy and who he’ll be like, we have no idea who this person growing inside me is. That freaks me out almost more than thinking about how this pineapple sized being will have to come out of me at some point.
I have a stranger in my abdomen and so far all I can determine is that he’s currently a morning person who either loves or hates banjo music. That’s about it. I can think about how Ray and I interact with one another and how I manage students at work and how Ray was as a kid and what each of our personalities contains, but what combination will emerge after biology and environment collide is a complete mystery.
