To Be or...

I wonder if you ever stop wondering?

Girls – and girls in the true definition – start to wonder whether they could cut it as parents at the age of three and I’m wondering if it ever stops.

A few days ago, I had a two hour discussion about abortion, adoption and babies in general. Through the wonders of the internet, five different people weighed in on the topic in separate little anonymous, compartmentalized windows. Through experience, the wisdom and thoughts of others trickled through.

The first time I ever remember saying I didn’t want to have kids, I was about 11. I don’t think I said it to anyone else, at the time, but I knew – then and there – that kids were not for me. Of course, I’m relatively certain now, though the details are fuzzy, that my then 4 year old brother was probably pulling my hair at the time. By 15, I’d developed a list of sixteen criteria that had to be met before my want could ever come into the conversation. By 18, I was beginning – in embarrassing moments - to wonder what I would need to do to meet those eligibility requirements.

Today, it’s a craps shoot. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, a cute little baby girl in frilly dresses learning to talk resides. Next to that, an angry 15 year old boy is flunking math and stashing drugs in his closet.

While I have yet to find many things to cosmically thank my parents for – I can at least say that a lesson was learned, on my part, when they brought my brother into the world. In infancy, he annoyed me because he never slept through the night. As a toddler, he drove me crazy with his refusal to actually potty train until he was nearly four. As a kindergartener, no shiny $17 CD was safe from his jam hands and kleptomania. As a third grader, no evening of baby sitting was complete without a literal attempt on my life.

Yes, having a sibling has taught me many things – patience, self-defensive techniques, stealth – but none will ever be as important as the healthy fear of pregnancy I learned from him. At 13, his anger management issues are, mostly, under control, but he’s already fallen down a slope into the D and F range that I could never forgive a child of mine for. His interests go no further than video games and skateboarding and, more infuriating than anything, he excels at neither. Just around the corner is a classic display of the family's alcoholism gene – though, I must say, he made it longer than I did.

Sure, I ask myself questions no other sane individual would. What would I do if my child was stupid? It’s better that I ask it, I’m sure, than being dumbfounded by a “average” result on an IQ test, but it does make me sound cruel – no? What would I do if I ended up with a “sports” kid – something I lack interest, understanding and patience for.

To a degree, by 18 I felt like I had already dealt with most major parenting hurdles. My childhood was a strange one – one that involved more inclusion in family decisions and, most noticeably, the parenting of a younger sibling, than most kids my age. I knew the ins and out’s of a lot of it – the discipline balance and the various and sundry things that sound so easy on paper but never work when you get home.

At 16, I had conviction and I was informed. At 18, I had my first scare.

Okay. It was less a “scare” than a “paranoid episode” in which I did a silly thing, mussed up my pills for a few days, and panicked when, three weeks later, my period was three days later than it should have been. The nurse I called, nearly crying, laughed at me and muttered something about ‘calming down’ but that week from hell opened up a whole new set of fears.

What would I do if it happened by accident?

Normally, it’s something I dissuade with a new brand of pill or by picking up a prescription for Plan B - and then one of my stupid extended-friends has to go get themselves accidentally pregnant and slam the pastel-blue “Baby” bumper car into my passenger door.

I’m a stark believer in “pro-choice politics,” but I never purported to be someone who could go through with it. I’ve always wondered if the 15-year old drug addict who lives in the basement of my cranium would be enough to out-last the 24 hour waiting period. Then, I do know adoption wouldn’t be an option for me. Maybe it’s something that would be easier for a single girl with no relationship but in my quasi-married state, I’m not sure that even I, the Mistress of Gift Wrapped Problems, could compartmentalize nine months of food cravings and swollen ankles away to hand my child over to someone else.

So, I’m left with two options – I could attempt a mission abort and risk losing it completely, or I’m in it for the long haul – 3 days in a 35 degree left over while the boys in the trenches try to catapult me around the moon. (That’s another reason I should never have kids – Mike has me weaving Apollo references in by accident. I can’t imagine what the two of us would do to a child.) It’s the “To be or not to be” of the 20-something female.

Maybe you never stop wondering – because maybe the older you are, the more you wonder.