Princesses and Tutus and Unicorns, Oh My

Last night, I dreamt about my daughter.

She was two or three years old, my favorite age for kids- old enough to talk and be fascinating, young enough to come up with the craziest shit you’ve ever heard. She had a head full of golden curls, and the sweetest hazel eyes I’ve ever seen. She looked exactly like I imagine January Jones (Betty Draper from Mad Men) might have as a toddler.

Now, I’m not huge on kids. Not the idea of having them myself, or the actual things that scream in enclosed spaces (especially ones that you can’t get out of, i.e. planes, trains and automobiles), trip me on the street, and generally make me want to steal their candy. (And I don’t even really like candy. Give me salt over sugar any day.)

B and I even joke that yet another reason we’re compatible is that we’re both pretty much ambivalent towards the idea of children, as far as having our own goes. (Other peoples’ kids inspire pure hatred, of course.) We agree that while mini us-es would be kinda cool, and definitely produce some laughs (at their expense, of course), we’d also like to be able to afford (mentally and financially) to take extravagant vacations, spend our real estate money on location rather than a big yard in suburbia, have lots of cool toys… basically, we want to live our lives the way we want to live them. And kids eff that up.

But, ya know, I also have ovaries. I think about it occasionally, when I see a handsome young father with his little girl on his shoulders, or a mom with a (well-behaved) adorable little boy wrapped around her leg. And sometimes, just sometimes, I think maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. In fact, when I read blogs like Amalah’s, I almost think that it has the potential to (someday) be the greatest thing ever.

This dream was so amazingly vivid, and the weirdest thing about it was that there wasn’t really a story. It was just a flash-forward to what might be, say, 10 years from now. The dream was an absolutely ordinary day: B was puttering around the house with a mini-him about a year old, same dark hair and insanely beautiful eyes. But my little girl didn’t leave my side. I walked around the house with her on my hip, doing completely ordinary, I’m-a-mom-with-a-house-and-a-dog kind of things. I can picture her sweet little face looking up at me while she asked a million questions, and I answer each and every last one, patiently (now we KNOW this was a dream) and adoringly, while I fix dinner (she “helps”, of course). I can still see her laying in bed, snuggling against me while I read her favorite Cinderella story for the eleventy billionth time, and her eyes, laden with B’s heavy lashes, slowly close as she drifts off to lands of princesses and ballerinas in tutus and unicorns. (She is my little girl, after all. There would be lots of princesses, this I know.)

Then I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and looked around for her, frantic that she was missing.

Until I saw B sleeping next to me, age 26 (in four days), and most definitely not a daddy.

Thank god. Dodged a bullet on that one…

But she was so sweet…

(Damn you, uterus!)