Remember that time when I
told yall that I closed my eyes and had a whole exhale? Closed my eyes and
everything, just like Savannah #LordBlessNippyRIP… Well, in that interaction
the topic of kids came up. Lawd, bless that too.
It was different this time tho *queues up Melanie Fiona*... We were two
cis-gendered individuals on the opposing sides of the genitalia spectrum, who
could (if tax beneficial mutually agreed upon) come together and get some of these April 15th blessings #FaithWithoutWorksIsDead. But there we were both childless and deduction-less in this year
of our Lord, yet again.
I was honest, reflective,
introspective, and caught off guard, actually. Obviously, my vagina (or abdomen)
hasn’t been ripped from the north to south hemisphere and tied together with
disappearing threads like a Beyonce weave, but my heart was saying, ...but, bih you got hella kids, tho.
 |
| At some point, we're going to address the "She Got Kids" track. |
...and I get it. Just like
I wasn’t at the court rebounding free throws and three’s with Steph, I was not
with you at 3:00 o’clock in the morning, every morning from the moment that lil
[bleep] beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, baby child of yours decided to
interrupt your sleep with well...no reason in particular, and sometimes all the reasons why. In reality, I can’t lie - I enjoyed being able to come in to the
house at 3:00 o’clock in the morning, actually, and pass out until, well, I
decided I wanted to get up. I don’t want to trade places with you. Not even a little
bit.
But to think that just
because I don’t have goals for my life that involve other humans (or
rather, haven’t figured out how to accomplish them), that I don’t have the capacity, care, or concern to nurture the
life of a child is diminishing and downright disastrous - you’ll need a
babysitter one day, and my schedule will be the only one that’s clear so, pick
and choose your battles love. Especially when I charge whatever it is you have
in your fridge and liquor cabinet. I don’t even make you go to the store first
AND I do the dishes. More than that, my friends who are local? I petition them
to allow me the opportunity to hang with their kids, with my phone in hand to
compare our calendars. When I went to visit my goddaughters (I mean,
best friend, but you know I really wanted to see the kids more than him) my first question was, ...don’t you and your
wife wanna go out? Yall can go together or
separately, I don’t care! Just gimme the kiddies!
My oldest (not in
age) baby girl called me one night. I had fallen asleep watching
basketball. I woke up confused, but speaking through my confusion because I
just knew that something was wrong. Something was on her heart and vexing her
spirit. We stayed on the phone until she was laughing again. A day later the
youngest (likely in age) called me excited about a
tribulation she experienced because it opened her up to explore a new
opportunity. Both of them dealing with stuff Mama already dealt with, looking
for some wisdom because wisdom is good, especially when it profits the wise #sophocles. And they were trying to come up. I was clearly TIRED (hello, I
love watching basketball) and had like A MILLION
things to do, but when those calls came in, nothing else mattered. When I got
off the phone I petitioned the Lord to watch over my babies - let what I
learned from my life, from my mistakes be used for their good. What that sound
like to you? I’ll wait.
I was watching Celebrity Wife
Swap hella on accident. In this episode, Niecy Nash was swapped with a
non-black family. This family had a young son who was a terror. At one point,
the little boy said he wanted to hit her with a rock, and even throw her in the
camp fire! And y'all wanna wonder why we say black people don’t go camping. I
would have left for a hotel too girl. So, anyway, she tells the family that
she’s taking them out for a really nice dinner, and in order for that tasmanian
devil to go, he has to act right. Yall know what happened. That lil terror
showed himself completely. But, unlike his mother, who reinforces this behavior
with little to no discipline, Niecy kept her word. The little boy was left at
home with a babysitter (not me) while the rest of the family went out to dinner.
That’s not even the story.
When the couples came together to speak about the experience of the swap the
mothers exchanged their wisdom. Niecy conceded that opening her children up to
new experiences like being in the outdoors could be beneficial to them, though
she’s not sleeping in a tent - ever. When Niecy shared her wisdom about
implementing some discipline ON SOME LEVEL (help me, somebody!) the woman would not even hear it. The worst part is, her husband
and the other two children remarked on how their dinner out that night was more
pleasurable without that little terror, you know, terrorizing things. What good
is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise? #SophoclesAgain (or the “could
have been made wiser” by this situation but you wanna be stuck in your ways).
Summa’yall like that woman.
Just because you tooted your coon-coon up[i] one night (did I do
that right Pearl?) and now you have this child, you think that we, especially those
of us sans children, have nothing to offer. No ability to understand. No
capacity for empathy. But above all, no wisdom to give. Niecy wasn’t giving her
the rod that stereotypes suggest she would offer, she was just saying, …don’t spoil your child so
much. She wasn’t wrong. At all.
And again, I get it. I’ve had swollen feet from my running adventures,
and a night stock-piled with shenanigans. I’ve never had swollen feet as my
actual shoe size for an extended period of time. I know that our experiences
mothering aren’t exactly the same. But the meltdown I had in OshKosh trying to
figure out the age of the baby and what that had to do with the letter T looked
really similar. And to think, all of crazy expensive baby shower registry items
people without children purchase? Visa and Mastercard can’t tell the difference
between the child having and childless, so why are you so worried about it? We
bring bougie diaper and wipes trees to baby showers! It’s cool for us to
“parent” when we’re using this “disposable income” everyone thinks we have, but
not when we offer advice? We aren’t out here trying to tell you how to breath
during birth, we’re just saying, your 2-year-old meant it when he slapped me,
so we need to do something about that than charge it to his age. Sooner or
later, Jr is going to come up on some charges and if your skin color is the
same as mine, we better start praying today that he doesn’t become a hashtag
later.
I could go on and on, but
the reality is, I've already
told yall about this. Remember that time I told yall about a child I had that changed my
life? In a month’s time, this young man attached himself to everything that was
inside of me. And just when I was getting used to our unshared genetics, he was
taken from me. I wept. I wept something like Jesus. I wept - something like his
actual mother. You know, the one woman in the whole world who knew what I was
going through because we kind of lost something like the same thing. You know,
the same woman who for years allowed me to carry some of the burden of her
loss. Because it wasn’t just hers - it was both ours (unequally,
of course).
So, think of it this way.
You get the benefit of the tax deduction. We get the benefit of a good night’s
sleep. There is enough of the nurturing, guiding, raising, after-school
pick-ups, and parenting for all of us.
Don’t be selfish, yo.
Remember, you might need a
babysitter. #YouCantBeatMyPrice #DefNotInTheBayArea
[i] Let this metaphor be a placeholder for all the ways children come to parents. However you birth your child(ren) (in love, via legal proceedings, etc), if you think I don’t know nothing because I can’t deduct these ones I “got” on my taxes, then I’m absolutely, unequivocally talking about you. I’m likely calling all yall out yall names, so there is that.
