Able to Breathe

"So, do you think you want kids?”

That's how he delivers the question. As casually as placing a dinner salad on the table and asking which dressing I preferred.

I know exactly where this question is coming from. We're driving home from a barbeque in which I fought off a six year old for four straight hours. We raced, we played tag, we played go-fish, we explored her playroom.  She was always there. Hanging on me, begging me to play the next game, latching on to me like a third arm. Her parents were begging her to behave and leave me alone. She couldn't get enough.

The thing is, I'd be lying if I said I could.

"Yes…” is my simple answer to his incredibly complicated question. I pause, and hold my breath. "You?”

My boyfriend, Adam, didn't find her never-ending attention as endearing as I did. When we arrived, her parents were still freshening up, and she let us in, sat with us in the living room, and we asked her questions about school, boyfriends (because that always gets a smile) and what she did that day. We probably asked questions for a good half hour before her family properly started the barbeque. By then, she was my new pet. Very lovable, very loyal, very needy. Perhaps even too needy in the eyes of Adam.

"I don't know," he answered.

And I let my breath go.

The thing is, I love kids. Love them. Always have. I think it's amazing how the world is so new to them, incredible that they communicate with their eyes and their smiles and their touch, fantastic that they learn more in an hour than I do in a week. I love their smiles and their tears, I love their little shoes and tiny toes, and I love the idea that I could dress them up in little adult-like clothing and treat them as if they're not kids, but proper little people (who admittedly may need a little scolding every once in a while). In fact, I never imagined myself without them.

The truth is, though, that the question about having kids isn't that simple anymore. Adam and I are serious. We talk about retirement and saving for that retirement, we're both saving up miles so I can fulfill my dream of traveling around the world. He's met all my friends, all my family, and has shockingly gained the approval of every person he's met. I talk to his mother on the phone on a weekly basis and miss him the few days I don't get to be near him. And so the question of having kids isn't as simple as “Do I want kids?” It's completely changed. The question is “Do I want kids if that meant I couldn't have Adam?”  when Adam has already entered the equation as someone that I completely love.

I posed that question to him. If it were between not having kids and having me, does he know what he'd choose? He said it wasn't a fair question. I responded it was very well the question one of us would have to answer.

I understand his hesitation.