I recently turned thirty and well, I thought I would have become more, achieved more by now. And now... Now it feels like those invisible aspirations, those hidden dreams that I held on to are even more remote than ever. Floating away in a little puff of cumulus nimbus clouds. Quiet exhalations of desires, dreams, and postponed goals.
Not that parenting suddenly robs you of all of your potential, but it does make it harder to focus and achieve those things. Well, as a mother anyhow. The father does bear some of the brunt (if you are lucky), but for the most part, the raising of a child falls on the mother. The weight of that small, toothless wonder is not just physical.
It pulls you down, down, down and you must go forward. Must. Treading water easily transforms into sinking, quickly. The future bears its ugly face forward and time does fly, on speedy wings goes by. It waits patiently for no one.
Having a child makes you confront your fears to realize they are minuscule and by association you are minuscule and insignificant. A mere microscopic bacteria in the scheme of things. If you are lucky, that little bacteria can infect something great and thus become something more. But for most of us, we remain that little inconspicuous speck of mold on a slice of stale bread.