written by Lutfi, edited by Kukuh (at a lovely cafe)
I imagine our knees eventually protesting against activities as ambitious as climbing stairs, and the two of us spending an unreasonable amount of time arguing about what to watch. You will probably find new ways to annoy me. I will continue treating my own shortcomings as endearing personality traits.
A beautiful life, if you ask me.
Our story would make a terrible television drama. The biggest conflict of the week might be over who last had the AC remote, and the producers would probably insist on adding a crime. Hate speech (by me), I bet.
They’d give us a child for the season finale. Though, in real life, we might never have one.
We’re both comfortable with that. I’ve never thought motherhood was what made a woman complete or the final certificate of a life well lived.
Occasionally, I wonder what a child of ours might look like. Perhaps your smile and my stubbornness. Poor thing. But the thought doesn’t linger for very long.
I could imagine having children. I could just as easily imagine never having any. Neither prospect feels particularly tragic.
We have a life to figure out, and I find the prospect sufficiently entertaining without introducing another human being into the equation.
Lately, though, I keep thinking about children. Not necessarily ours.
The prospect of spending several years without a decent night’s sleep is already a compelling argument against parenthood, as far as I’m concerned.
I could probably handle the financial considerations. Give me an evening and I could produce a spreadsheet covering school fees, healthcare, and a dozen contingencies that might never materialize. Complete with formulas, conditional formatting, and an unnecessarily elaborate classification system I struggled to learn in that class we don’t talk about.
I won’t enjoy making it, which is probably another reason I shouldn’t reproduce.
But even the most meticulous spreadsheet has its limitations. Like, how much should I set aside for clean air thirty years from now? Or the budget needed to cool the air to a livable degree?
I keep returning to the phrase empty land. A place can be full of trees and birds, yet somehow qualify as empty the moment somebody decides it could be useful. Perhaps the trees should have applied for residential permits. I suppose they had their chance.
I think about how easily familiar places disappear. Sometimes so gradually that we struggle to remember what used to be there. Other times, a few signatures and a week of machinery will do.
There’s an old saying that a society grows great when old men plant trees knowing they will never sit in their shade. Now I wonder about the inverse. Old men cutting down trees whose loss they may never live long enough to reckon with.
A very convenient relationship with time.
Sometimes I wonder if I am being unnecessarily pessimistic. Humanity has endured wars, epidemics, and a remarkable number of terrible decisions made by people who were presumably quite confident in their own intelligence.
We have survived all of that, although the word we is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence.
Our parents certainly had no assurance that the world would become a better place when we grew up. They made their decisions with whatever understanding they had, and here we are. Complaining about civilization on the internet. Such productive descendants. Although in our defense, our parents probably complained, too. And theirs before them. Civilization has never run out of material for it.
I know no generation gets to begin with a clean slate. Still, uncertainty feels like an oddly forgiving word for things people decide on purpose. We are told to plan ahead, save for retirement, think about the next generation, and be responsible adults.
But I can decide where I want to live or what kind of life I want to build with you, and whether parenthood has any place in it. Yet the air we’ll breathe and the landscape we’ll grow old looking at seem increasingly contingent on decisions made somewhere beyond our reach. That arrangement I find quite irritating.
I’ve been indifferent to motherhood for years. If we never become parents, it won’t necessarily be because the world frightened us out of it. And if we do decide to have a child, I don’t think that would make us irresponsible, either.
I dislike the idea that women must provide an elaborate justification for whichever path they choose. As though having children requires no explanation, while deciding against it demands a dissertation.
I already have enough paperwork in my life.
Some people have always imagined themselves raising children. Others are perfectly content with the idea of remaining a family of two. I wish both could make their decisions without having to treat the future like a threat assessment.
Because there will be children here regardless of what we decide. They will grow up, fall in love, and make plans of their own. I hope the world leaves them enough room to follow through. Perhaps they’ll be less willing to put up with the nonsense we’ve learned to live with. I hope so.
For now, I still want our ordinary future. The ageing, the books we never finish, and the ridiculous things we’ll probably continue finding funny long after everyone else has stopped laughing.
Maybe we’ll have children. Maybe we won’t. I am remarkably at peace with either.
And if we do grow old together, I hope we’ll still have places worth revisiting. Somewhere we can sit for a while, look around, and recognize the world we once knew.
Nothing terribly ambitious. I still want to grow old with you. I just keep thinking about the people who will still be young when we do.
Sincerely,
Lutfi and Kukuh
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