She's constantly asking me when we're going to have kids. She gave up asking her brother-MY husband because he goes Jim Mora on her ass as seen below in this Coors Light commercial.
Just replace "kids" for playoffs and you'll get a good sense of my husband's reaction.
"Kids?!! Kids?!! Don't talk to me about kids!!"
All of this is done while he pulls at his hair in exasperation and then walks away looking like some kind of exotic bird with his hair sticking up in all directions....actually on second thought a mad man might be a better description.
Anyway, when she asks me I usually give a polite answer never sure how to respond since my husband has just finished throwing a tantrum and usually just shake my head and throw my hands up in the air and look pointedly in my husband's direction in a way that says my hands are tied because I'm married to a mad man slash exotic bird.
This is when Iris is at her best.
She leans in close to me and gets real serious. "Everybody forgets their birth control pill now and then, don't they," she asks in her best attempt to look all innocent. She points over to her daughter, that just happened to get knocked up on the ONE day she forgot to take her pill. Hmmm, I'm no birth control expert but I don't think it works like that......
I must have not looked convinced and that's when the conversation got even better. It was then suggested that I take a needle and put a hole through the condom. Wow, I thought. What Spanish novela have YOU been watching!!?? I mean that's serious stuff but then I started thinking that's kind of brilliant....in a sneaky, totally wrong but still kind of genius if you were in the market to trick the man you are sleeping with to father your child-kind of a way. And which for the record, I am NOT.
Hell no, not for me-I'm big on karma and there's no way tricking your man to get preggers can go over well with the karma police.
But I like Iris and I know she means well. And her "life is so simple why complicate it?" attitude is refreshing although arguably unrealistic. What's all the worry and fuss for-Iris wants to know? So you live in a one bedroom apartment, so what? So your husband is scared, puhlease he loves kids-he'll be FINE.
And I do think there's truth to what she says. Well not the part about forgetting your pills or poking holes in condoms but she points to her son-in-law and says he was reluctant to have kids but once he held his son it was all just boundless amounts of love.
Something else she said during one of our recent visits also stuck with me. I had just given her some response to the whole so when are you having kids inquiry something along the lines of, "soon, soon we just want to enjoy each other-just the two of us a little while longer." That's fine and dandy she says but after a while you start to feel like something is missing in the marriage and the thing that's missing is children. So hurry up and start having them.
Sure Iris, because it's sooo easy just to make the decision to bring a living, breathing human being into this world. But in her mind, yep-it is. Go have kids damn't.
But I gotta tell you I totally get the "something's missing" thing.
For the past couple of holidays and vacations I've kinda felt it..the whole "something's missing feeling." I found myself wondering wouldn't it be nice having a little bundle of joy here to share this with...isn't that young family having more fun jumping in the waves at the beach than we are....isn't making my husband-a grown man wear a happy birthday hat and decorating the apartment with balloons a sign that maybe we need a kid?
