Cat

“When my wife was pregnant with my son, we had many talks about possible futures--things we would do, ways that things would go. All of this dreaming came to an absolute halt on the day of the birth when our son appeared. I don't mean to give the impression that we were unhappy, because we weren't, we weren't unhappy at all. It was just that a sheer wall had appeared confining us and our lives in certain ways that we could never have guessed at before. My wife said to me about it--I think that my whole life before was training for this.”
― Jesse Ball, Census

“He would sometimes become frustrated, very frustrated, because we would set goals for him, and it would happen that we, who knew nothing about what would turn out to be possible or impossible, had helped him to set a goal that was too much. This was enormously depressing for him. On the other hand, if we set goals that were too easy, then he would lose interest, or what's worse, struggle with those out of some expectation that this easier thing was as hard as some other hard thing we had recently shown to him. There had to be a happy balance, though, and we learned it in time. Mostly it was a matter of mood--keeping a strong mood of joyfulness and gratefulness, and trying not, in our attitudes or speech, to lay the world out in hierarchies.”
― Jesse Ball, Census

“With stuff this big, almost any way of looking at it can be true. We all talked like we were going to eventually reach some grand conclusion, some correct stance, but in fact it was different for everybody, impossible to pin down. Was childbirth traumatic or transcendent? Was pregnancy a time of wonder and awe or a kind of temporary disability? Were we supposed to fit our lives around our children or fit our children into our lives? My feelings changed every minute, depending on my mood and on the company I kept. It felt essential, though, to keep asking the question.”
― Meaghan O'Connell, And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

“I don't think that my wife was disappointed by my son. I don't think that she blamed herself, or blamed me. Her understanding of things was richer than that. But I do know that she sometimes wished we could have done more. There were things she had hoped to do, and now it is clear, now that she is dead; we simply did not do those things and won't. I suppose this is true of children in general, of any children, but it seems especially true of a child who must be cared for permanently. I never apologized to her for him, and she likewise never said anything to me about it. If such a feeling of unhappiness existed, it would only have been in the abstract, for the particulars were: we felt lucky to have had him, and lucky to become the ones who were continually with him, caring for him. I have read some books of philosophy in which the freedom of burdens is explained, that somehow we are all seeking some appropriate burden. Until we find it, we are horribly shackled, can in fact scarcely live.”
― Jesse Ball, Census