Children, Etc.

By Andrea Scarpino

Los Angeles

Zac and I will have been together nine years in October, and while most of our friends know we’re not going to get married, we still get the occasional question about having children. My answer changes depending on my mood. If I don’t really want to talk about it, I may say something non-committal like, We definitely don’t want kids now, but maybe sometime in the future. If I’m feeling feisty, I’ll step up on my soap box and talk about how there are already 6 billion people on the Earth and that adding more just doesn’t make sense environmentally or socially or politically. . . you get the idea.

But the truth of the matter is that I’ve always figured a child would come into my life when and if she needed to—just like my various pets. I was always the kid who brought home any creature that looked like it needed some love, which means I’ve sheltered a snapping turtle, an injured songbird, rabbits, baby geese (that we put in the bathtub), frogs and snakes, fish that I won at a fair, several dogs and one very loud cat (whom we named Kato after OJ Simpson’s famous houseguest. The cat showed up, was ridiculously handsome and immediately fell asleep in my lap. I was hooked, even though he has never again sat on my lap since we let him move in five years ago). I always figured a child would show up in a similar fashion.

And children have come into my life through my friends, who seem to be birthing more and more every day, and most recently, through my brother, who just moved back to the US with his wife and step-daughter. Now I know I’m biased, but it’s pretty clear that my niece is the cutest little girl in the world. She’s five years old (six years old in Korea because Koreans count newborns as already having lived a year—all that time in the womb should count for something) and she’s still learning English, but she is a firecracker.

Playing with her, I think about how cool it is that my niece seems interested in being with me—that we’re choosing each other, not because I birthed her but because it’s fun to hang out with each other. I know this isn’t entirely a choice, of course—she didn’t just walk up my driveway and ask for love like Kato did—but there’s something extra special about the fact that we found each other. That her mother and my brother fell in love and got married, that they moved to the US for graduate school, that I have this little person around who reminds me so much of myself when I was little. When I’m with my niece, I feel vindicated that my faith has paid off, that there are already so many kids in the world, a few will find me when they’re ready.

Andrea Scarpino is the west coast Bureau Chief of POTB. You can visit her at:

www.andreascarpino.com

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto