Sitting Phoenix for the weekend was fun but I am exhausted. I haven’t hung out with anyone pre-teenaged much at all recently — My world consists of adults, some legally still children, but in my mind very much adult.
I remember every year after sitting him why I don’t exactly want kids, really. I enjoy them, and with a partner who was really committed to giving a good, unique upbringing, I could really enjoy it. But I don’t want to play russian roulette with my life, where there’s a bullet reading “Has satellite TV, a station wagon and Mr. Clean under the sink” in the chamber. I do not want that life.
Phoenix’s parents are scarily the people most like my parents in town. They’re both mellow, natural-building, organic-food types. They both ended up with queer oldest children, and ended up owning a nice house in a pleasant rural town. They’re comfortable. And I don’t really want to be much like them.
In some ways, I want their ideals, not their reality. My parents now want a smaller house, and what I read into their saying that they want a simpler life is that they want something they don’t have to work so hard maintaining so they can travel and go do things more. I want that too.