Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Traveling Down the Slope

Penn and I have been doing a lot of skiing this season. We bought Night Club passes that we can use on three of the mountains within a short drive from here (yes, the "mountains" are small enough here that you can light them for night skiing) so we've gotten into a routine of skiing on Sunday evenings. I really love skiing. It has always been my favorite sport-y activity. I never did it on a regular basis until this year, though. When I was a kid growing up near the Rockies we'd generally take a family ski trip once a year or so and go for 4-5 days. I actually got pretty good during that time. The nice thing about skiing is that it's like riding a bike: you don't forget how to do it no matter how much time goes by. So when I met Penn I was able to comfortably ski the intermediate slopes and I could occasionally be talked into trying an expert one. Over the past two winters we have done a lot of skiing. We took that week-long trip to Maine last year and then skied locally a couple of times. And this year we've been skiing once a week all season. I'm proud to say that I have improved noticeably over the past two seasons. I can now ski any trail on the mountains we frequent, including the double black diamonds (the advanced expert trails). True, I don't think an east coast double black is equivalent to the double blacks I've seen out west. I still don't know that I'd be brave enough to try one of those. For one thing, the runs here are much, much shorter. But here I can do any run as long as I can take my time. I've also been practicing moguls although I'm awful at them and can only do about four widely-spaced ones properly before my legs start burning (I don't know how those Olympians do it. They must have thighs of steel). Penn has even talked me into going into the terrain park a few times, and while I'm still not ready to attempt to get any real air, I've at least been riding over the jumps.
So I'm getting better at this activity and I love the time Penn and I spent skiing together every week. Yet every week when we have finished skiing and are on our way home I feel a bit melancholy because in my mind skiing has come to represent everything that will change over time. Every week now I find myself reflecting on the finiteness of our current lifestyle. First of all, skiing is something that I will not be able to do for my entire life. Most of my hobbies aren't particularly strenuous: reading, watching lives shows or music, walking the dog, and so on. Assuming I am lucky enough to live to 90 years old in good health, I'll still be able to do most of the things I like to do now. Skiing, though, is something that I will have to give up one of these days. I'll either get injured or my body will just get too old and weak to handle the physical stress. I realize that the day I will have to give up skiing is hopefully far, far in the future. My dad is in his mid-fifties and still skiing, after all. Still, it makes me a bit sad to think that there is a possibility that my body will give out on me before my spirit feels ready to quit the sport. (I suppose that's a really common fear that can be generalized beyond skiing, actually: that if you live long enough you inevitably reach a point where the spirit is willing but the body just can't keep up anymore.)
In a more immediate way, though, skiing has come to represent everything we will have to give up as we start our family. As we've been preparing to get married (before we were even formally engaged, in fact) Penn and I have been talking about family planning and what our ideal plan would entail. Let me preface this by stating clearly that I know, I KNOW you never get to experience your ideal when it comes to having children. To a large extent things will be out of our control once we start trying to conceive. Actually, things aren't even entirely in our control right now. We've been lucky that birth control has worked well for us, but while most of the reason we haven't gotten pregnant is because I have been a responsible pill popper, probably a small part of the reason we haven't had a surprise pregnancy has just been sheer luck. I get that. I also understand that we can't just decide that we want to get pregnant in, say, April and actually get pregnant in April. And I understand that even once we get pregnant there is no guarantee that we'll get a living, healthy child out of the ordeal. I realize that all of it is a big "Who knows?"
Of course I find the whole thing very scary because I like the semblance of control I pretend I have over my life, and I like having a plan. So, Penn and I have made a tentative plan, knowing full well that life may not conform to it. We're trying to balance all sorts of elements, but the driving force behind all of my decisions in the process has been this thought: "We are in a very lucky position in which we can make having children a choice. So why not attempt to make the most responsible choices possible?" It wouldn't be the end of the world to get pregnant right now. In fact, I honestly do feel more-or-less ready to handle that if it happens. But as long as the birth control is working, why not hope that it keeps working and make plans assuming that we'll actually get to choose when we would like to be parents? And make that choice in a responsible way? So, for instance, we're thinking about my age. I'll be 28 when we get married, and even if we get pregnant on our honeymoon (which is highly unlikely) I'll be 29 by the time the baby is born. One of the things I love most about Penn is how eager he is to be a father. He told me the other day that if it wouldn't be so frowned-upon by our families (my family, actually) he'd like us to start trying even before the wedding so that we're not wasting any time. [Incidentally, I would veto that idea even if I thought my family wouldn't care about me being a pregnant bride. I would like to drink champagne during my own wedding toast, thank you very much!] We'd love to be able to have more than one biological child. Again, I know we can't control it, and although we know how many children we'd like to try for I think we mostly need to focus on number one first and see how that goes. The point is, though, if we want the option of having more than one biological child, the responsible choice is to start trying to conceive sooner rather than later so that we can hopefully have more than one child before I age into the high-risk category. Sure, I know that women are having babies well into their 40s now (many women don't meet their partner until later in life so they have no other choice), but overall it is still safer and easier to have children earlier in life so, again, because we kind of have a choice in the matter it makes sense to choose to try to have a baby early in our marriage rather than waiting too long. It also makes sense to consider other factors: our finances, our living space, our careers. I am opposed to living with a baby in our current condo for an extended period of time. We just don't have the space. Sure, you can put a little baby in a bassinet in your bedroom and if we got rid of our futon we could put a baby care station of sorts in our current office/guest room. But it would be cramped and messy and it's just not something I would like to do in the long term if we have a choice. And right now it sort of does feel like we have a choice. That's my point, I guess: sometimes people have babies accidentally and they don't have a choice. They have to raise their infants in much, much, MUCH more difficult circumstances than a lovely condo in a nice neighborhood. If it came down to it and we have to stay here long term for some reason, of course I wouldn't put off having a baby for years just so the baby could have its own bedroom. That's silly. But since we're trying to make a responsible choice, why not wait to try to get pregnant until we think we're close to being able to move into a bigger space? On that note, why not wait to have a baby until I've finished my degree and am at a good point in my career to change gears and take a maternity break? All of these things come into play.
So, with all of these things and more in mind, the basic plan now is for me to go off birth control shortly after our wedding. And this is where it comes back to skiing for me. Next year we'll be on our honeymoon for three weeks right in the middle of the ski season, so there won't be much skiing, if any, next winter. Ideally by the winter after that I will be pregnant. And then we'll have kids, and while I'm all about the idea of getting a baby-sitter sometimes so Penn and I can have grown-up dates, I think that skiing won't be one of those date activities because skiing is already a really expensive activity when you're not also paying $50-$100 for a baby-sitter on top of it. Eventually we'll be able to ski with our children, and that's something I love imagining, but that is something that is very, very far in the future (and also very, very expensive so not likely to happen as often as it does now). All of that to say, I'm trying to be in the moment and enjoy this winter's skiing because it is definitely something I am going to have to give up for a while.
It's scary to think of all of the things we will sacrifice to have a family. But I think maybe everyone has to work through this point before having children, this point where you think "Our life is so nice right now, what if a baby screws it up?" Logically I know that a baby will enhance our life, not ruin it. Everything I've ever read about it and everyone I've ever talked to and all of my gut instincts tell me that I'm going to like being a mother and that the rewards will outweigh the difficulties and the sacrifices. I suppose it all comes back to making responsible decisions. I wouldn't responsibly be deciding to have a child if I didn't first work through this point of saying, "I am making this choice knowing what I will have to give up (if only temporarily) to do this." I'm not going to lie, it feels like a lot to give up: my toned body, extensive one-on-one time with Penn, the ability to make impromptu plans and take impromptu trips, sleeping in (sleeping, period), seeing our friends whenever we feel like it, being completely in charge of how I want to spend my time, a ton of other little things that I do now that I will be able to do again someday but not with young children. It's mostly a lot of little things, honestly, but they add up into this lifestyle that I have put together that I love. I think I'll love life as a parent, too, but that is still a big, huge unknown. And it's hard to give up a lifestyle that you already know you love for one that will hopefully be better but might not be as good (at least not at first) and certainly not as easy.
I don't want this to come across wrong. Fundamentally I am 100% positive that I want children, for many reasons (Why I Want Children is yet another entry, though). I have in no way, shape, or form changed my mind about wanting to be a mother. In fact, I've gradually become more and more excited about starting a family since I met Penn and realized he is supposed to be the father of my children. It's just that as it becomes less of a fantasy and more of a looming reality, I have to mentally prepare myself. And it turns out part of that preparation is doing a bit of mourning for the parts of my life I'm going to have to give up.
I feel lucky that I have this time to prepare myself, though. I think if I just patiently let myself work through some of the worries, by the time we actually take the plunge and go off the pill I'll feel more than ready. I'll probably be ridiculously impatient by then!

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