Marriage, House & Kids...

We've finally settled into our new home. Though there are still pieces of furniture and fittings still missing, we're taking our time and it's been nearly 2 months since we've moved in. Finally, a place to call our own. It also means for us a whole load of new responsibilities be it lifestyle and financial. On Saturdays, we can't just dash out to blade and swim as we wish, it's housework day - for vacuuming, mopping and laundry. After discussion and much coercion from friends & family, I am almost sure we will eventually succumb to hiring a part-time helper to help with the domestic chores, to spare ourselves the misery of toilet-washing and ironing, and of course to free up our precious weekends to pursue the finer and fun-ner things in life. But even so, I am still proud to have managed at least our first 2 months on our own, so now we know every nook & cranny in our house, where to place the laundry on a rainy day and how many machine loads it takes to clear our weekly laundry, so I know that if and when we are needed to handle our own housework, I can confidently say "Been there, Done that." That's good enough for me.

So now that we've moved in, it's also an appropriate time to count our blessings. We have come quite far, KT & me. From the initial proposal, to the almost dissolution of engagement, then the delay of wedding plans until finally tying the knot on 2 May 2009. I wouldn't call the journey dramatic, but it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that it's been eventful & at certain points, unexpected.

Expected though, are the very predictable standard questions almost every married couple get a few months after marriage - when is the factory going to start production? - What are we to answer? Errrr... we are waiting for funding? Pending approval from top management? We have long term plans and short term target is firstly to have a healthy balance sheet? I'm running out of creative answers to skirt such questions humorously, tempted more than once to just give a "meh" face and walk away. The question "so what can we expect little KTs & HJs?" rings like fingernails against blackboard... MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!!

I've been trying to get started on this book - Eat, Pray, Love - by Elizabeth Gilbert (www.elizabethgilbert.com/eatpraylove.htm). (disclaimer: her views does not 100% reflect mine) I find the thoughts about having a baby not unfamiliar.

An excerpt:
"But I was supposed to want to have a baby. I was thirty-one years old. My husband and I —who had been together for eight years, married for six — had built our entire life around the common expectation that, after passing the doddering old age of thirty, I would want to settle down and have children(...)

But I didn’t — as I was appalled to be finding out — want any of these things. Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant. I kept waiting to want to have a baby, but it didn’t happen. And I know what it feels like to want something, believe me. I well know what desire feels like. But it wasn’t there. Moreover, I couldn’t stop thinking about what my sister had said to me once, as she was breast-feeding her firstborn: “Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it’s what you want before you commit.”... And every month when I got my period I would find myself whispering furtively in the bathroom: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me one more month to live ...

I’d been attempting to convince myself that this was normal. All women must feel this way when they’re trying to get pregnant, I’d decided. (“Ambivalent” was the word I used, avoiding the much more accurate description: “utterly consumed with dread.”) I was trying to convince myself that my feelings were customary, despite all evidence to the contrary — such as the acquaintance I’d run into last week who’d just discovered that she was pregnant for the first time, after spending two years and a king’s ransom in fertility treatments. She was ecstatic. She had wanted to be a mother forever, she told me. She admitted she’d been secretly buying baby clothes for years and hiding them under the bed, where her husband wouldn’t find them. I saw the joy in her face and I recognized it. This was the exact joy my own face had radiated last spring, the day I discovered that the magazine I worked for was going to send me on assignment to New Zealand, to write an article about the search for giant squid. And I thought, “Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for a giant squid, I cannot have a baby.”"

Again, I must reiterate this does not entirely reflect on how I feel, although I can personally identify with many points brought up in those paragraphs.

1. Being expected to want a child -
Once someone gets married and approaches or passes the age of 30, the question comes "so are you planning for a child?" People start looking at me all worried when I reply we're not sure if we want one, EVER. I wonder what their reaction will be if I say, "well maybe we should try for one, but if we regret having it, can we pass it to u?"

2. Men seems always more ready to have children than women -
I'm not saying my man thinks having a baby is an easy thing, but it is undeniably simpler to say "OK Let's have one" when you're not the one walking around looking like a bloated hippo who won't be able to see her own toes for the next 10 months AT LEAST, and still have to deal with preggy fats 2 years after labour.

3. Unless one is ECSTATIC & sure about having a baby, perhaps one is not ready yet -
I was telling KT yesterday, having a baby is scary for commitment-phobics like me, kinda like getting married multiplied by 100 cos we can't divorce a child when they turn into our worst nightmare. The opposite extreme of walking out on a monster kid, is to become so blind to their misbehavior, even their incessant tantrums are simply "their special way of expressing themselves". I mean, I see parents look at their mad screaming brats with adoring eyes and pray to God to strike me dead if I ever become so blind, but again, I digress. (My mum has taught me from young, NEVER EVER to say things like "my kid will never be as naughty as that brat". She must have been made to eat those words)

So... returning to the topic of whether we want children, here are my thoughts:
Children complete the family. If marriage is the union of 2 individuals, children qualify as the fruit of that union, embodying a combination of 2 persons' unique physical and personality traits in 1 person. If that's not amazing, I don't know what is.

Children are a HHHHUUUUUGGGGEEEE commitment/responsibility/obligation/burden/leh-cheh. This needs no further explanation and by now I am sure many people are clicking on the comments button to give me a piece of their mind.

But that said, it is a burden we willingly carry out of love and it is one that will hopefully bring out in us a better person. A burden shared by 2 people in love, to add a few more persons into the equation, more to share the love with.

Moving into the new house has been already a brand new learning experience for us. From arguing about personal space to nagging each other to do their share of the housework, from managing expectations about pet peeves to synchronizing bedtimes, it has been nothing less than a challenge on our patience. And this somewhat trying time has opened my eyes to a new lesson on our relationship, how to literally Give & Take. It's not about maintaining the house the way I like it, it's about respecting that his method can work as well and it doesn't matter all that much that the handtowel is in the wrong place in the kitchen as long as he is happy. Cooking for the spouse does not count as being part of the housework, because it is optional and additional and hardly qualifies as an act of love if he/she is the one made to clean up afterwards, helping to mop the floor with her is a much more effective way of showing affection.

If even managing a space between the two of us can bring about so much contention, what more bringing up a living breathing child? Unless we have learnt to live together in 1 house, how can we bring up a third or fourth or fifth one in this house?

So perhaps I (and all those who asked the questions) have to be contented with this for the moment, do we think married couples should have children? Absolutely. But will we? Possibly. But for the moment, let's start on keeping the house and the marriage in shape.