Children

On Thursday, Mum and I went for a swim in Highley, which is an outdoor pool about an hour away from us. Because it's the school holidays, there were lots of families there, and this reminded just how uncharitable and genuinely cruel I can still be. The children were not being more obnoxious than the average group of children- they did not try and interfere with my swimming on purpose, though most of them managed by accident; I was still thinking extremely unkind things in my head. Things I will not write on here because I don't want a record of them associated with me- the bottom line is, there is no enemy to principle so strong as inconvenience, and I'm still not as easy going as I like to think.

A long time ago, when Travis was still a small mound in Mel's tummy, she and I had a conversation about how our friendship had changed and was different to other friendships we had at the time; ours was more of an adult friendship, based on fewer face to face meetings and more casual long-distance conversations. I said how my Mum had maintained a comraderie with a couple in Yorkshire and how every half-term she and Dad would drag me halfway across the country, kicking and screaming, to one of the dullest places on earth. Mel promised to do the same to her unborn baby to see me.
On Monday, she fulfilled that promise. In actual fact, the journey time from Newtown to Shrewsbury is only about half-an-hour, but Travis certainly seemed to begrudge the distance, and he was not impressed that I had been the object of such an ordeal; upon seeing me, he immediately declared that he wanted to see Auntie Rachel instead. So far, so good.
Travis did not remember me, which is not surprising as I had been absent for a third of his life at this point. But he did warm up to me, gingerly, and taking one step back for every two we advanced, but he specifically asked that I push him sometimes, and even that he be allowed to wait with me while Mel went to one of her accessory shops (one I have been stringently avoiding since they accused my sisters of shoplifting). The crescendo of our bonding came when he asked me to carry him back to the railway station- I picked him up, and he immediately wriggled and declared 'Uncle Rory's spiky!'- his word for unshaven. I transferred him to Mel and then asked, with a coy smile, 'Travis, for me, would you call mummy 'spiky'?'. With an impish grin, he acquiesced, then almost instantaneously after hugged Mel close and said 'I'm sorry for saying you were spiky, mummy'.
I'm rather fond of Travis.

And these two incidents, rather close chronologically, symbolise perfectly my struggle over that really rather important question: do I want kids? Yes, they're noisy and take up space, and scream and shout and constantly make unreasonable demands and force you to listen to music you don't like (I only recently discovered that my mother dislikes the Les Mis soundtrack and has been keeping silent on this for years). But they can also be sweet and charming and fun, and you can teach them things which really feels like one of the most rewarding things ever. But I am a very self-centred human being, and that's what makes me most happy and I honestly don't know if I want to sacrifice stuff just to bring up someone else. But apparently living like that leads to one being lonely in old age and that also sounds pretty awful. I really can't come to a consensus on this, and I understand I can put this off for a number of years, but if the goal is to NOT be lonely in old age, then surely putting it off is a temporary solution at best? I mean, I certainly don't want to still be caring for a child in my old age (my parents have discovered how annoying this is upon my return from Oz). I'd really like it all done before I was fifty, so I can have more of the stage where they're grown up and stable and just kind of pop in occasionally so we can both have our own lives separate of each other (like my parents had before I returned from Oz- they were really happy), so I really need to be aiming to have the thing at thirty. But then I also don't want to do it alone, so I'll have to start aiming to meet someone who shares my will and get to know them and decide we're suited for one another enough to have a child together, but that will take time on its own, and I also want to have a life after uni for a while and I kind of feel like a window's beginning to close rather quickly and I still don't know if I really want children.

This is a cycle that runs itself in my head every once in a while, and, being surrounded by Travis, and the three Cornish siblings (who eerily remind me of my own siblings), and my incredibly broody mother, and Norma and Sally and their tales of Grandparenthood, it's been running itself ragged recently. I know a decision will have to be made, and maybe very soon, but for now I can't help asking my friends if they want kids just to see if anyone else has the equation more clearly than I do.