Babes in my woods

A third friend has just told me she's pregnant. While I am extremely happy for her, don't get me wrong -- she and her husband are going to be great parents, they'll raise a credit to society and probably a drop-dead gorgeous one too -- I'm feeling like the walls are closing in. I am hurtling toward my 35th birthday like it's the edge of a cliff at the end of this year.

No, I am not thinking about having children. OK, I am. But you know what? Every time I think about a cute little grub snuggled up to my breast, tiny fingers and toes and rosebud lips, all I feel is trapped, panic-stricken, and horrified. I think about the endless demands. About preschools and colleges, daycare and dangerous strangers. I think about how much easier and almost as satisfying having cats is. Except cats won't take care of you when you're old. Cats won't replicate the excellent relationship I have with my own mother. Whenever I follow the baby-thought all the way through to the end, I just can't see it. I can, however, see me as the most beloved aunt of whatever children my sister's going to have, who I will spoil rotten.

What's bothering me about all the pregnancies is that they represent a major milestone in one's life: creating another life. Reese Witherspoon gets on my nerves and I thought the Oscars were beyond boring, but something in her acceptance speech hit me between the eyes. She said, "I'm just trying to matter." Well, I'm just trying to matter, too. It's a lot easier to leave your mark with a kid. One way or another you "matter" to that little person more than anyone else. As a childfree atheist, I've decide the only way I'm going to matter is by writing books that other people will hopefully read and take something away from. I don't need or truthfully even want to be famous. I just want to be able to make a living writing books that enough people will buy and with a little luck, read some of the funnier or wise passages out loud to their friends.

So, as a now-disgraced author would say, "F*** the bullshit, it's time to throw down." I'm just going to have to write my way through baby season. Or else I'll have to decide whether it doesn't matter if I "matter" or not -- and I know that it doesn't to anyone but me, that we have just a brief time on earth, all 5 billion of us, and we do the best we can but regardless, we die anyway -- but I'm not there yet!