A Forgotten Promise to Myself

Cooing babies. Sticky fingers. Adorable smiles. Sentences that only vaguely resemble anything from the English language. That intoxicating smell of the top of a baby's head. My best friend telling me for the last four years to have a baby so she can buy him or her presents, my mom most certainly being ready for a grandchild to spoil, my friend Sean saying to me last week, "Well, yes, you'll have a young family."

It's all got me thinking.

I've said before that I want to be a mother. I don't think it's any big secret that I have a major maternal streak in me, but it's been in the last month or so that I've begun to realize what having children will actually MEAN.

I'm out of the rush of grad school, the haze of no sleep that was the past couple of months, and I'm also out of daydreaming about having a relationship and am actually in one. I want to be with Wine Guy, that much I know.

I also know that Wine Guy is not going to be ready to get married and have kids for a while yet.

I have a good gut instinct.

I'll admit to being worried at first. I've got this ever-changing notion of what marriage and parenthood will be like, but the notion doesn't really leave my head. What does his not being ready mean for me?

Luckily, though, in all of this thinking, I have recently remembered a promise I made to myself in high school: that I would learn how to be a woman and a wife before I became a mother.

I really understand that there are steps in the process, and that my future husband, my future children and I will all benefit from me taking time now to develop as a human being.

Certainly, there are some selfish motivations. I want to travel the world. I want to live in different places. I want to work different jobs, live different lives.

But I also want to have a solid relationship with my husband as a man before he comes a father.

It's hard to admit to not being ready for the thing I want most, but it's also something of a relief to admit that I'm willing to wait for it.