Ice and Babes

Well, I can't make up my mind which topic I'd rather talk about just now so I think I'll talk about both. Pressingly, it's rather icy outside. This is what happens when no one shovels. Even though there was only a small amount of snow (really) in London, compressing it by stepping on it, letting it warm just enough in the sun to liquefy and then ice up again in the night turns certain streets and sidewalks into sheets of ice. Including the one just outside my house. It can't be even an inch in thickness, but it's enough to take your life into your own hands by walking on it. Luckily, the street is more clear so if you can cross the ice sheet to walk on the street instead, you are okay.

Still, this perplexes me because it would have been very simple to avoid all of this ice if people would just shovel. My theory, for London at least, is this - you know those guys who pick up trash in the wheelie bins? Why not, for the days that it is snowing, take away their wheelie bins and give them a shovel? As long as you make a clear path, it will actually stay clear even if it doesn't get warm enough to get rid of all the snow. This is obvious around London when you go places where people walk a lot, and can see that as long as the snow was gone from the start, it generally stays clear.

But seriously. Come up with a strategy. I just did. It's not that hard. And it would save a lot of falls!

Now, to completely change subjects.

I have a couple of friends who are trying to get pregnant and one friend who is at least halfway through cooking her bun in the oven. Not to mention those friends of mine who already have kids.

In fact, it's a somewhat unfortunate side effect of Facebook- to see people I have met at various stages throughout my life who were, when we met let's say 'at the same point' as me. Some of them, like, people I went to high school with, are just having their first children now. So on the one hand I don't feel that behind, but on the other hand if you consider that before you get a kid you probably have relationship for a while, and then a marriage for a bit, and then you might try for a kid and it still takes nine months for one to mature, I guess I'm more behind then I thought.

On the other hand, my two closest friends from high school do not have children, and I believe there are a fair few others as well. So I'm not the only one- but when it's on your mind, I guess it's how you look at it.

Now my two friends trying to get pregnant are a study in contrasts. Both are concerned that they may not get pregnant, but both are approaching it entirely different. Friend one (who went off the pill first) is worried that it might not happen. Has occasionally checked her hormone levels to see if she is ovulating. Her and her husband have decided however, if they don't get pregnant, it's just not meant to be. They wont' do IVF. They'll get pets.

Then there is my other friend. She went off the pill a few months ago and is not pregnant yet. For various other reasons, this event has become the only thing of importance to her life. In fact, in some ways she is hanging her whole value as a person on whether or not she can get pregnant. She's been to the doctor to get tested and checked. She's sending her husband to get checked. She says after 6 months they must start hormone therapy. She says because she isn't pregnant yet she feels as though she is broken, and that she has left it all too long.

To which I am utterly puzzled. What does 'left it too long' mean really? Because she, like many of my female friends, always assumed we would grow up to have a husband and probably a family and for many of us, this did not happen in the way that we expected when we were children.

She hasn't gotten pregnant yet because the opportunity really wasn't there. If she were to look at the course of her life, I suppose she could have gotten pregnant 'by mistake' at some point. But had that happened, she would have probably had an abortion. She was never in the relationship she wanted or needed to be in to raise a child. So I don't really see how she can be so critical of herself now- that she left it too long. If it was going to happen earlier, it would have happened earlier.

And then to say this to me, who only has one ovary now, who does not have the husband, or even the relationship that might be a husband and so am at least a few years off of the possibility of having children (at least how I currently think of it) I find slightly mental (or at least, inconsiderate).

I know there are other significant reasons that have to do with who she is as a person and her current life choices and resulting situation for why this particular life event has taken on such immeasurable significance. But still. It's sometimes difficult to listen to.

And it does make me think about things I don't think about all that often- mainly, about whether or not I want children and how there is a time window that gets smaller and smaller every year for that to happen. It is fair enough to say that I am well past the half way point of my ability to have a child. And although there are many likely years ahead of me, it's well on the downward slope now. Not to mention that, as I say, without a relationship with any sort of potential, some of that time is just eaten up anyway and the window gets smaller and smaller.

Will I be sad if I never have children? I think so. It is something that I always thought I wanted. But I only wanted it within the context of a relationship and family. I have never been overly keen on babies or fantasized a lot about being a mother. But it is something, within the general outline of my life that I thought I would like to have or be.

And that may not happen. I suppose I could always adopt. I could always find someone with children already. There are other ways to 'have children'. But I mean having my own. I understand that this may not happen. Yes, this makes me sad. But I also understand that as sad as it may make me, there was no opportunity along the way where it would have been a good idea for me to have a child either.

I suppose I could have done it alone. Been a single parent. But then my life wouldn't be at all what it is now. My entire life would have been about being a single parent for a good long time. I would maybe never have moved to England, possibly never become an architect. Of course this depends when it might have happened. Having a child on your own is hard. And expensive. So while it could have happened, maybe, I don't really regret that I didn't have an accident or mistake. And that's what it would have been. I have never been in a place where I was actively wanting a child with someone. That just hasn't happened yet and it may not happen ever.

But I don't really see that I'm to blame or that I've done something wrong. Or even that I'm broken. Life is what it is you know? No one gets everything that they want, and you have to learn how to cope with disappointment. Even for things that you might really really want. Hopefully, there are other things in your life that make you happy and content. Children really shouldn't be the end all be all of your existence. I mean, what does that then say about you as a person? That you are nothing without a child? Then you are basically saying that you are nothing now.

Frankly, I find that much more sad.