Newsletter from Jay Wilcox - January 2024: On Time or Within a Week or So

Good morning/afternoon/evening!

My daughter's coming home this month--either on the eighteenth or within a week or so. I would say I can't believe it, but the past eight and a half months have had some pretty heavy foreshadowing. We've built a nursery. We've stocked her wardrobe. Her bassinet stands waiting by our bed, replete with her stuffed giraffe, and at night, she (my daughter, not the giraffe) wakes us up every hour with her calisthenics.

Even with all this buildup, all this excitement, I still occasionally find myself wondering, "Why am I doing this?"

I don't think the world is heading in a good direction. Not in the next several decades, at least. With climate change and political instability, how can I justify bringing someone into being? Years ago, in one of our late-night, at-the-bar powwows, some friends and I concluded that having kids is selfish. Is the world not already crowded? Don't kids come with a major carbon footprint? We drank deep of that peculiar assuredness that comes with being a Progressive White Man--a confidence borne of "I'm forward-thinking enough to be a good person but not so progressive that I'm annoying about it, therefore I'm truly objective." 

At the time, I didn't conclusively not want kids. Still, I couldn't argue with the fact that nobody asks to be born. In more spiritual moments, I've wondered if perhaps a line of souls waits across the veil, counting on couples to build bodies, vessels. I've gardened on gorgeous days and thought, "Who wouldn't want to experience this world?" I think often about Ursula as my gardening buddy--and at the same time, I think of the suffering she'll have to endure later in life. She'll pay taxes and get rained on and lose her good Tupperware at work. She'll lie awake and wonder why she's here, what comes next, and even if she fondly remembers all those seeds she planted with her dad--all those peppers and pumpkins and cherry tomatoes we harvested, warm fall days--she'll probably still fear her own mortality.

Why am I doing this?

A poetic part of me wants to ask Ursula why she's doing this, but burying my existential concerns under any kind of spirituality or religion feels unsatisfactory. We're building a tiny person. I can't shift the burden of our decision onto this child.

Back in 1998, I was so excited over the possibility of getting a Gameboy Color that I lost sleep in the weeks leading up to Christmas. When I did sleep, I dreamt in the same glorious colors promised by all the commercials, fields of pixelated Pokemon. What I'm trying to say is that because I was conceived and then born, I got to experience the rapturous joy that is new Gameboy stuff. What I'm also trying to say is that I wait for Ursula with that same insomniac eagerness. I've seen her in my dreams. Full color! Breathtaking resolution! I've held her and danced with her, and I don't know how to wait for this.

Grief is the price of love--but I believe grief shows up regardless, the interest charged on lives unlived. Is the goal of life to skirt attachment, commitment? I'm not going to spend my life prepping for the End Times. I won't live in a defensive crouch, ready to flee at a moment's notice. If the world ends, then it ends, but in the meantime I'm having a child because I want a child. Because every day of my life, I've chosen my life. If Ursula's anything like her old dad, she'll find joy in small, beautiful things--for example, portable gaming devices that allow you to play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater in the palm of your hand. If parenting's even half as exciting as that, I think we're gonna be alright.

Infinite Regards,

Jay

P.S. - In writing news, I finished a first draft of a science-fiction novel last month. Onward and upward!