The decision to have kids

We talked about kids a lot, especially early in the relationship. Mostly before marriage.

Hillary was clear she wanted them.

I was not clear on that topic.

We talked, debated, etc. Ultimately, Hillary was content to let me lead the way. She had said what she needed to and we weren't in a huge hurry.

It wasn't actually a terribly complicated debate. I selfishly was scared about the sheer amount of work and love that it would take. There would be a toll on our relationship, we would change and change is scary.

Hillary's arguments boiled down to two.

"You're going to want to have had kids when you're older. Someone to be around."

She never would have admitted it in life, but I wonder now if some part of this was her always good natured joke that I had to outlive her.

This argument never swayed me that much, but I knew how much it meant to her.

Her second argument was very rarely articulated out loud, but was an undercurrent in these discussions. The times I remember when it came up explicitly in conversation was when she was pretty inebriated.

She wanted to have kids because it was a part of the human experience. She was this body that could do this and she wanted to feel it, to go through it, to know what it was like.

Fundamentally life on this earth only has a few constants which push it forward through time. Birth, reproduction, death.

I brought it up sometime not long after we moved into Carina Place.

"I think we should have kids."

That day became the last day she ever took a birth control pill.