Our pregnant friend dropped by with her partner for a coffee today, and for the occasion I made a good old Australian Pavlova. And if I do say so myself, it turned out pretty good. However, the vanilla custard I made with the leftover egg yolks had a lot to be desired. Thankfully, it was an afterthought and wasn't used for what we were serving and it was good enough for Smallsteps and I to make an ad hoc banana split for dessert tonight, while my wife is off with her friends.
The couple are still a few months away from giving birth, but as he is a professional sportsperson, they don't actually know in which country they are going to live, let alone have the baby. As a result, they haven't bought anything in preparation, there is no "nesting" period for the mother and it is all up in the air. But, they are coping with it well and are taking it in stride.
But, they are nervous of course, since it is their first and as they are "young" in terms of having a kid these days, I don't think any of their friends have had kids yet either. So, they were picking our brains a little bit on what we went through and the advice was pretty basic - keep it simple. Don't plan all the nonsense for the birth like track lists, and babies don't need much in the terms of stuff for the first couple months. Wherever they live, all the basics are available, so don't stress.
I think these days, a lot of folk want to make everything an "experience" and put a lot of expectation on how things are meant to go. But, I think that there are so many variables when giving birth, setting expectations is just opening up a can of worms. So take care of the fundamentals, and live the experience as a tiny sliver of what the future with the child will be. Because soon the details of the birth will be forgotten by the real experience of being a parent.
I don't know what it feels like to be weightless in space.
And to really feel it authentically, I'd have to go to space to experience. I think it is a bit like parenting in some way, where while there are substitute experiences, I don't think they can fully capture being a parent. This doesn't mean everyone should be a parent, rather that life is full of experiences and none of us can have them all, no matter how much we seem to think we can.
It is okay not to experience all life has to offer.
When we are young I think a lot of us feel that we have a lot of potential to experience a lot of variation. But part of maturing is understanding that life is mostly limited, and no matter what we or anyone else does in life, there is far more left undone than we can do. Therefore, we have to come to terms with the limitations and take as much as we can from the possibilities in front of us.
I remember hearing a thing where a person should make a list of their top ten desired achievements, and then delete eight of them. Kill your darlings in a way, because if the list remains long, there is not enough time, energy or resources to do them all. Don't be disappointed with what you don't have, or do a lot of things half-arsed, put energy into a couple things and do them very well.
And perhaps if a parent, that should be on that list. Yet, a lot of people want to have it all, as well as being a good parent - but it might not be possible. It might not be possible to have a brilliant career, travel the world, and be a great parent. This doesn't mean that it isn't possible to do these things averagely with some better than others, but brilliance at everything is impossible and all activities take time and energy. Good parenting takes time and energy too.
A great pavlova, but a poor custard.
Maybe it is okay.
Taraz
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