The Baby Game...

So now it's happened twice.  The first time I convinced myself I was imaging things....but now....

The conversation started off innocently enough.  Each conversation with my father has started the same way. The typical "How was your day" turned and suddenly I found myself on a completely foreign planet.  Here's how it went from there:

Dad: "I ran into so-and-so's dad today."
Me: "Really? That's cool."
Dad: "Yeah, she's on her THIRD kid.  Things must be going REALLY well for her if she's already on her THIRD kid."
Me: (slightly uncomfortable here) "Must be....good to know things are going well for her."
Dad: "Yep.  She's what? A year older than you?"
Me: "Yes dad, she graduated a year ahead of me."
Dad: "Yep, things must be going really well....married, and on her third kid."

Insert subject change here.

My father and I haven't really ever been extremely close.  Up until the day my mom died, most of our conversations consisted of, "How's the car? You eating well? Need any money?"  And in the two and a half years since, it's been pretty quiet on the get married/have babies front.  

As I hung up the phone that night, I was immediately taken back to the last time I had been confronted with that question from my family.  My mother had already gotten the diagnosis and was in the middle of her chemo and radiation.  I had become the unofficial wicker basket for all of her emotions - her fears, her worries.  She and I talked every night for hours at a time while I let her rail against the world that had been so cruel to her while she had been nothing but good to it.  One particularly bad chemo day my mother was confronted with her own mortality and that night she decided to needed to share a conversation she had with my father.  She was telling him about what she feared most about the cancer....and then she hit me with it.  "I'm really afraid I'm going to die before Becky gets married.  I'm afraid I'll never see her have children."  (Side note here, I'M Becky)

It was like getting hit with by a semi - every ounce of my core hurt.  It took my breath away.  I fought back tears as she continued the conversation, oblivious to the impact that one statement had.  And then I went into assurance mode - that she would beat the cancer, that she would be okay, that one day she would watch me get married and one day I would introduce her to her grandchildren.  In a way, I was trying to convince myself just as much as I was trying to convince her.

And then I went on a mission.  Trust me, I tried to find a guy that would marry me after only knowing me for 48 hours, but apparently that's more stalker-status than anything else.  Time passed...and just a few short months later my mother entered the hospital and never came home.  I never got married.

That was the last time I was asked about marriage and babies.  My sister welcomed my beautiful niece into the world and the focus was turned there.  I was saved from the idea that I wasn't able to give my mother what she wanted before she died.

So now it's been two and half years and apparently it's time to start bothering the 32 year old youngest daughter about marriage and babies.  My brother has 1, my sister has 1.....guess it's just time according to everyone.  One person I work with told me that I needed to settle down soon because I "would make a great mother."  I'm used to it from friends and well-meaninged random people.  BUT MY FATHER?

I just can't seem to find the words to tell him that ever since that phone call a year ago I've been in an internal struggle with even having babies.  So for now, I'll continue to say the line I've perfected - "A little after now and sometime before never."  Seems like a pretty good tagline for my life.  And I'll keep reminding myself that even without kids, I'm living a very good life.