11.06.2010
Two sentiments: some people come in and out of your life but will make an impact and children are only given to us on loan.
On an errand, I passed by the junior college I attended and memories from that era popped into my mind leading me to think about a close girl friend I had. We played on the volleyball team together and at a time when my other teammates shunned me she accepted me. That time-period was a dark one in my personal history and the iron wall I built around me made the others uncomfortable. But this friend looked beyond the wall and helped me along my difficult road back to life.
In the grand scheme of things, we were friends for a very short time, about a year and half, ending mainly because I couldn’t maturely handle working two full-time jobs, my transfer to UCLA and keeping up with the schedule we established like staying up all night (which sometimes included driving to the beach and crashing a private beach club, midnight runs to Rite Aid and the like). I stopped returning her calls thinking I’d deal “tomorrow” until that “tomorrow” never came and she pulled away completely. Still to this day, I miss her.
These memories prompted me to think about the sentiment that kids are merely ours on loan. We raise them, sure, but we (shouldn’t) don’t raise them to live with us forever. We shouldn’t have kids to fill a void in our lives but should have kids as an addition to the life we already have. The truth of the matter is, though, they won’t be there every day, every moment for the rest of their or our lives. They will one day walk out of the front door to be on their own and will leave behind the memories of the years gone by, along with the anticipation of new memories to come.
We become friends with someone because for whatever reason, paths crossed, there was a click and the journey began. But sometimes a fork in the road brings that journey to an end. That friendship was given to us on loan. In fact, one could argue that any friendship or relationship is just a loan and to accept this loan is a big risk, for better or worse.
Would I reject my friend’s friendship were I given an opportunity to go back in time knowing the pain I will go through when the friendship dies? No. I am a richer and deeper person for having had her in my life.
Nothing is permanent. Is it fair to reject the idea of having a child because of fear of pain (emotional or physical)? There isn’t one thing in my life that I would alter, either good or bad, because those experiences (still) shape me. A temporary experience created continual change. How different is having a child?
