Faux Parenting

It might get a little sappy for a moment. And I understand that I'm risking chiseling away any piece of masculinity I might have left in your eyes.

A couple things may have triggered this next line of thought. One was an email from a reader I received on Friday evening:

Were you planning on marring Lynn while you guys dated?

Did she know you were thinking about it, did you guys talk about getting that serious?

And/or do you think that she pondered too long if you were going to ask her or not, e.g. did you guys get into any fights/ discussions about this topic?

The other trigger was a photograph I came across when I was Greco Roman wrestling with ginormous dust bunnies under my bed over the weekend.

First was the email about marriage to my ex. Of course, it was discussed and quite maturely, I must admit. We agreed that we would wait, because we weren't ignorant of the fact that 50% of marriages in the US ends in divorce and that each year you wait, you increase your chances of a successful marriage (ahhh, the joys of being a sociology major).

It was never something I was scared to discuss and I never got panicky about the idea. It was something I was looking forward to... eventually.

The picture I came across is one that was taken when Lynn and I took a little girl to the zoo. Lynn used to babysit a little girl occasionally, when the girl's parents would take trips to the mount and be gone for an entire weekend at the time. Her parents knew me well enough so they didn't mind me staying over. It didn't happen often; I probably did this about four times total.

I used to drive back home from college and I'd stay the weekend. The little girl was barely 2, so Lynn and I played with her, put her to sleep, fed, cleaned up vomit. I remember at night, being on pins and needles, waking up to the slightest sound coming from her nursery. I'd nudge Lynn awake, "Do we need to check on her?"
"No, she does this all the time. Stop worrying."

I'd be excited to wake her up in the morning and she'd hold my hand as we walked down the living room. I'd grab her a bowl of dry Cheerios and she'd sit next to me on the couch while we all watched cartoons together.

Truth is, I loved doing the faux-parent thing; even if it was just for a few weekends out of the year. This isn't to say that I'm anywhere close to being able to do it now. But at the time, I loved the idea that it was going to happen at sometime. And more specifically, with Lynn. We made a damn good team.

After I found that picture, I tucked it back into an album and took a shower to clean the dirt off from The Great Room Clean of 2008. I got to some deep thinking (tends to always happen when I take showers for some reason)...

Am I ever going to find someone who will get me that excited about marriage and having a family with?

It's hard to imagine. And of course, I know that I can be melodramatic about these things and being completely realistic, somewhere down the line, I will.

But I can't help but wonder.

The pic.