She calls for my attention with one short, simple sound. It’s one of my favorite sounds that she makes, a musical “look at me.” I scoop her into my arms, hold her close to my chest, breathe in her scent, then let her go when she starts to squirm. She walks away, for the moment satisfied with my love. It could be hours or days before she asks for me to hold her again. With cats, you never know.
She fills my heart with pure joy. She is the only baby I need right now. As long as she has food in her purple dish, water in her big white bowl, and the occasional snuggle, she leaves me to my own devices. When I’m sad or sick, she sprints to me and watches me with her big, green eyes before curling up close to me, as if pressing happiness and wellness into my brain and body. She is pure magic.
While I love my friends’ human children, I can’t imagine having any of my own right now, or in the near future. Most of the people my age that I know have at least one kid. I watch them love their children unconditionally, but I also watch them give up or postpone dreams. As selfish as this may sound, right now I want to publish a novel more than I want a baby. Sometimes, I feel like a stranger among my child-rearing friends. I’m not in the mom club. I can’t relate to their problems. Sometimes I desperately wish I had more childless friends. The few that I have, I cling to with tenacity; they are busy chasing their dreams, too.
Mike wants a baby within the next three years, before he turns thirty. Sometimes, the four years between us feel like more like ten. I’m not ready to even think about babies. I do want two or three, someday, but not now. Not yet. There are so many other things I want first.
I want to publish a novel. I want to get out of these everything-keeps-going-wrong twenties. I want a diagnosis. I want a steady income. I want to buy a house. If all else fails, I want that steady income and house. I honestly don’t know how anyone in their twenties — especially someone in their early twenties like me — could afford one child, never mind two or three. I can barely afford simple necessities like vitamins for myself. I can’t imagine having to buy diapers and formula every week, and entire miniature wardrobes at least twice a year. I also refuse to raise any child of mine in an apartment. I grew up with my grandparents’ house as a solid fixture in my life. If anything went wrong, Noni’s and Popi’s house was my safe place. I want my children to have their own safe, permanent house, where they will never have to learn what an eviction is or deal with not being able to go outside because the landlord couldn’t be bothered to finish filling the giant hole he left in the yard after removing a bush.
I don’t look down on people who have kids; mostly, I marvel at how they pull it off. And I get that some people feel they can balance their dreams with their babies. My brother-in-law does it, somehow, but it’s times like tonight when his daughter threw mini tantrums as he tried to draw pages for a comic book that I realize raising children and achieving your goals is not like frosting a cake and talking on the phone at the same time the way that movies, MTV, or some bloggers would have you believe. I get that it’s worth it to some people because at the end of the day, they have this beautiful, cuddly little human who throws their arms around their necks and whispers, “I love you, Mommy.” But I know myself. To do anything, I have to be 100% ready to do it, have to have completely made up my mind about it without a shadow of a doubt, or else I will struggle through it all the way to failure. Struggling to success is one thing, but I can’t do it if I’m not sure that I’m doing the right thing.
Right now, babies are not the right thing for me.
But my furry baby is more than enough.
) I also read and reviewed 
