biological clocks

In addition to not being ready to be married, I am also not ready to have babies. I love the children. I am a teacher and I live happily with twin almost-four year old boys. I adore every baby I see, and I have a Seymour Glass-esque obsession with their little feet. But goddamn. I’m glad I don’t have any of my own! It is HARD being a parent! You have to get up early, even on weekends, and you have to eat meals at normal times. If you have a hangover, you still have to be a parent anyway. If you have a toddler or a baby you have to put those obnoxious plastic things on every fucking drawer below waist level. And you find cheerios EVERYWHERE! You have very little time to read the New Yorker, and you always have to have quiet sex.
I just don’t want that kind of responsibility right now! I don’t even want to babysit anymore! A very nice, very wealthy family at my school asked me to come to their daughter’s birthday party, and offered to pay me, but I had to say no. Because babysitting sucks! I love my little dudes here at my house, and I try to spend a lot of time with them. But when their parents ask me to watch them for a couple of hours I get a little panicy. I’m not scared at all. I’ve been babysitting since I was twelve years old. I just don’t want to do it! And I LOVE these boys! They are like my own nephews! They call me Aunt Gorgeous! They fall asleep in my bed when I read them stories! But I don’t want to be in charge of them. It’s weird. I used to babysit them a couple of times a week, but now it’s only once or twice a month. I feel really guilty and baffled by my own resistance. I can only attribute it to my stalled biological clock.
I think teaching may be the best form of birth control. You can love and advise and joke your students to death, and then you get to give them back. No making dinner, no bedtime battles. You can head straight to the bar or your friend’s house. And if you smell like spit-up, it’s almost definitely your own.