Listen Quietly and Hear Your Uterus Weeping

Zoe,* the 8-year-old daughter of our Dean’s secretary frequently hung out at the Board Review Room. In her tender age, she was perpetually curious and incredibly inquisitive. It takes a whole lot of patience and concentration to be able to entertain her most of the time. Her favorite game was trying to scare the hell out of me by sneaking into the Board Review Room as quiet as a mouse and saying “Hi” loudly behind my back.

Whenever she was around, I could hear my uterus crying.

LOL. Just kidding.

Being with Zoe reminded me of my own childhood. I was a scruffy kid with hassle-free hair, whose mother was a working mom who had no time to fix my hair up in braids or bows before class. I played Chinese garter after school, was a pretty fast runner, loved working on 3000-piece puzzles and handsewing little clothes for my Barbie dolls. Because my mother was big on making us mini-geniuses, instead of toys, we got complete sets of Encyclopedia and a scientific calculator for Christmas.

I would like to believe that I wasn’t really a bad kid, I think I was rather well-behaved. My mother was incredibly strict and we were – and still are – afraid of her. Oh, there were the occasional punching my yaya’s breasts at the age of 5 (which was probably the reason why she quit), crawling under tables and chairs at the age of 6, sticking a pair of scissors into an electric socket and stapler-ing my own index finger just for curiousity at the age of 7, punching my four-year-old sister in the stomach at the age of 8 and jumping out of a running motorcycle at 9 and getting my foot stuck on the pedal with my thigh sticking to the "tambucho" while I was being half-dragged for a couple of feet and my thigh was slowly being barbequed.

But in general, I wasn’t really that bad as a kid.

Now, as an adult, well, that’s a different story. Hehehe...

I was spending some time with the 4-year-old son of our ex-helper, and I was amused by how easy it was to make him happy. I came home a little earlier than usual and was planning to spend the rest of the afternoon napping when instead I ended up fooling around and taking pictures with him. The thing is, I’m curious about kids. Take note, the term is CURIOUS. It’s the biological clock, maybe. I’m not really sure though if I want them soon because let’s face it. I’m incredibly selfish. I have things I have yet to do and stuff I have yet to buy that I still want to prioritize than spending it on expenses for a new baby. Second, I feel as if I still have too many things to learn about raising them. A good friend told me that once you have your kid, you just learn to do the right things. Spoken by someone who hasn’t raised a kid yet. But seriously, I don’t want my kid’s personality to be the product of a trial and error upbringing. Third, I suck at trying to instill discipline. I don’t wanna hurt my kids’ feelings but I yell when I’m really furious. I wouldn’t know how to best deal with a kid with tantrums. When my brother has a hissy fit, I prefer ignoring him. I don’t think that would work with someone younger than 14. Finally, and this is the biggest reason why I’ll probably hold off on having kids for a while, I’m really scared that if I had a daughter, she would be exactly just like me. Then I’d probably be running like crazy to my mother, weeping in her arms, finally realizing just how difficult I have made things for her as a perpetually stubborn and occasionally wayward daughter.

Of course, the fact that I haven’t met my potential sperm donor yet also counts. Hehehe…