I love kids, its no secret. Its a fact well acknowledged in my family, one of the things that defines me.
Love makes you a different and a better person, as they say.
It could be any kind of love, the key is, it is unadulterated.
Even love for a kid. You learn how to give and not expect, you love to pamper and even if they ill treat you at times, you can not give it back and keep loving. You become a slave to their effervescent blabbering, incessant questioning and baby smell.
I have felt all this with my sister's kids. I have been their favorite mausi (aunt) as I spent maximum time with 2 of them owing to the fact that I was single back then and stayed with my sisters when they had their kid.
But after marriage when I started thinking of having my own, I have no idea from where some creepy thoughts made their way in. I recall, I was a few months away from getting married, was waiting for my bus at the stop and I had the wildest thought at that moment.
"What if I hate my own child?"
In-spite of being a lover of kids, I had this disturbing thought. And I tried analysing it, right there at the bus stop.
I felt it stems from this apprehension as to what if you child is a replica of all that you hate in yourself?
Your insecurities, your weaknesses, your lack of judgment and clarity at times, your inability to take risks, your folly of trying to fall into the line with what society wants you to be.
To top it, what if this baby is also made of the things that you abhor in your spouse as well.
A worst possible concoction of a human, I must say.
Yes, I would want my child to have none of that, to be free from the ordinariness that defines most of us. To be a soul whom I can admire and probably rediscover and unlearn the ugliness that we all learn in our lives.
But what if s/he only reminds me of all that more and more, like no one else could have done otherwise?
I would be scared for her/him, love and at the same time loathe all of it, all at the same time!
It will be like reliving and dealing with all your own childhood issue/teenage tantrums..once again.
And it occurred to me that I would not want to love my own replica.
Something I dont like in myself, I can not bear someone else bearing the cross. And that someone else is someone whose whole persona I would be responsible for, while I would not even know from where all anomalies would seep inside that child. Genes and all.
I was contemplating if this is how I felt with surety about having a child or not..
But the very next moment the thought of something born out of your own flesh and blood seemed captivating to me. It must be overwhelmingly joyful to look at a small creature and find a hint of you in it.
Maybe the same eyes, or the smile, or hair..or mannerisms.
The toothless endearing smile, and the way s/he would find solace in me and only me. I would be his/her whole world..at least for a while.
I guess one can forego all the complexities of rearing a child for such irreplaceable joys, a zillion times.
Your child is probably a way of reliving the good, the bad and the ugly, once again.