Skipping Started The Clock

I was one of those rare women who never wanted children. Didn’t know a thing about kids. Didn’t want to. Honestly, didn’t see what the big deal was about kids. Everyone looked at them as if they were miracles. They subjected themselves to the tyranny of these little megalomaniacs who wanted everything NOW. I mean, adults who wielded power over millions of dollars, doctors who saved lives, allowed themselves to be at the beck and call of two-feet tall midgets. Why? How stupid were they?

My husband and I got married with the understanding that we would have a dog. He wanted kids, I did not, but we agreed on the beagle. For nine years, the man told me I would change my mind while I adamantly refused. He said I was the “type” to have kids. I assumed he meant warm and loving, not insane. Once, I broke down and almost agreed while on a trip to Bermuda, but I REALLY wasn’t ready (translation: I cried a lot).

Then, one day on my way to work, I saw a little girl…skipping. It was like one of those scenes you see in a movie. Something about the kid just hit me. She must have been 6 or 7 and I never did see her face. I just saw her…skipping.

For the rest of the day, I couldn’t get her out of my head. I never saw her again, or if I did, I didn’t know it was her. There was nothing special about her. It was just the site of her and what she was doing. I still get chills thinking about her because she literally changed the course of so many lives.

My husband and I went off the birth control (really I went off birth control) saying, “if it’s God’s will” and two months later it was. I was pregnant.

I love motherhood. I love kids. And now the woman who “didn’t want kids” has two. One biological (“the will of God”) and one adopted from China (another “will of God” just carried out in a non-biological way – and EVERY BIT a miracle).

What brings this to mind is my daughter has been…skipping. A LOT. She skips to school. She skips from the car to the house. She skips from the den to the bathroom.

And in some way, I feel she’s paying tribute to the anonymous little girl who started it all.







Note:  This post originally appeared in June 2010 on the New Jersey Moms Blog.