Inevitable Being

Walking the kid to school this morning, she told me that she didn’t want to get married when she grew up. What she wanted was two dogs, a cat, a rabbit, and that she would be a doctor. I told that sounded like a good idea; there are a lot of people out there who don’t get married, and are very happy.

She asked me if I always wanted to get married.

I said no, but when I met her mother, I changed my mind. That’s what happens when you meet important people, they make you think differently about things.

Then the kid asked me if I had a girlfriend before mom.

I did.

Does mom know you had a girlfriend before her?

She does.

Did you kiss this girlfriend?

I did.

DOES MOM KNOW THAT!

She does.

Then the kid thought about this for a while, and then concluded, I’m glad you married mom because it’s weird to think I would have had a different mom.

And I remember thinking the same thing when I was a kid talking to my parents about how they started dating. That if things didn’t work out between my parents, I would still have been born, but just to a different mother, or by chance a different father. But whatever the pairing, I would have come into existence.

I kind’a assumed that this childish thought that I had about my birth was due to my catholic upbringing. Having been taught that my soul was eternal, and that I would always exist, it was just a matter of God grabbing me and throwing me down to Earth to be born. That God had a plan for me, and that my birth and parents were just a necessary step in the process of my existence.

But for my daughter, we aren’t raising her with religion. (That is a blog for a different day.) We don’t shy away from conversations about God and religion, but she hasn’t been giving the stories of how God made her soul, and sent her down to mom’s womb. She’s been told the truth, that she is a creation of a little bit of mom, and a little bit of dad, and when it’s put together, it creates an original her, unlike anyone else in the world. Yet, she still believes that her existence is inevitable. That there was nothing that would stop her coming into being.

This isn’t a surprising revelation, now that I think about it. Can anyone really think of a world where they weren’t in it?

Just a sweet philosophical morning with the kid.