Live From The Wang: It's Not What I Planned

Thursday, August 15, 2013

It's Not What I Planned

Someone asked the other day, "Do you ever wonder how you got here?" or something like that. The idea that, do you ever look up and just wonder how your life GOT to this place. It could be a good thing or a bad thing, or just a question of wonder, how did I get here when I meant to be THERE?

I wonder it because I can promise you this isn't who I wanted to be when I grew up. That vision is fuzzy now, reality and years dimmed it's star but I know that changing diapers of my nine year olds wasn't on the list.

I also didn't plan the good things, though. I didn't think I really wanted kids or maybe just one. Having a family full of chaos and noise and madness is my favorite thing in the world. On those nights when a twin is keeping me up past 1 am singing the ABCs - and I feel cranky and out of sorts, I also know that if that voice wasn't there, my life would be less in some way.

I know I appreciate things more, because they are not easy. That doesn't mean I think I should SUFFER and live some PURITY THROUGH SUFFERING, because that's BS. It just means, good days mean more. Great days mean everything.

The thing that twinges at me, my lack of planning + the universes interference in my life is the impact it will have on my other two children. It's a burden that I carry, knowing that when my husband and I are dead some long off day in the future, our twins that we love so deeply but are in fact quite a burden, will fall to them to care for. They aren't THEIR children. And I worry they will resent it. I worry that THEIR lives will be altered more than is fair.

I was having a casual conversation with Louis, about having a family, and the course of the conversation wandered to being a single child, which I was for 11 years, to having a big family. I was telling him how, I'd always wanted to have brothers and sisters, and how when Matt was born it was the single happiest day of my life up to that point. I then shared with him how excited I was when I got pregnant with the twins, because then I knew he wouldn't be alone like I was. He'd have siblings and someone to play with - and I had such hopes for what that would mean.

It obviously didn't work out like that.

I only ever wanted my children to be happy. Those other dreams were just the usual selfish parental hopes and ideas of what will be. The world seldom actually works out like that.