Child's Play

So my mother calls me the other day and if we all remember my mother, we will all immediately realize that this could not possibly have gone well.

Now I've always thought I've been lucky enough to escape the familial pressure to squeeze out a couple of puppies as soon as I got married. Everybody around me is either having kids or being harangued every five minutes as to why they don't have 20 yet. I mean, my mother loves kids. She loves them so much she would eat them up with a spoon if she could, so I've been a little suspicious as to why she's kept silent for a whole entire year. Then the phone call came. And I could stop wondering.

My mother has a plan for me. Apparently the almost 10 years I have spent in school will be for naught. As soon as I graduate I am to produce the first grandchild. Shudder. So I point out the obvious (to me) fact of "why bother getting a degree then?" and she says I can't have children without a degree. Interesting little tidbit of information that's completely new to me. I wonder why the very bright people at University Marketing don't put that in the brochure? ATTENTION ALL POTENTIAL MOTHERS: You cannot reproduce until you graduate from this university (and that's not the School of Hard Knocks).

So then, in my feeble defense, I say "Well, I could just have kids now, since I won' be able to put my degree to any use after I start squeezing them out" and her response is "I'll look after them and you can work". Good god woman! The lengths she will go to.

And then she pins me with the very frightful statement of: Haven't you and citrusboy discussed this? Well, truthfully, we have. And quite truthfully, we don't really want kids because we're selfish bastards. I tell her I might consider adoption, because, well, I might and the fit she blows is worthy of Mount Vesuvius. I refuse to write down the things she said about adopted children because it's just not very nice. Frankly, I'm quite horrified, but there's no point in my blowing a steamy fit as well.

She goes on to tell me a life without children is tedious, unhappy, fruitless, miserable, and in general, just plain old stinking bad. I try and say I have no maternal instincts, that I just don't care enough, and I just don't see it. Maybe, one day, when I'm ninety, I will have realized the folly of my way, but not right now.

And then - a miracle happens. The phone cuts out. Seriously, it does. I am saved because I know she won't continue the conversation when next we speak.

So, thank you MTS. Even though you're one step above inept most of the time, this time you rock!