A couple of  years ago, long after my kids stopped being babies, I found myself in an odd minority. It is inevitable at the office or gathering someone will have a baby there, usually a child under 12 months. Obviously this child is the light of their life and the MOST BEAUTIFUL BABY ever, according to the gaggle (yea, I said it- gaggle…shoot me) of women. And all I can think is ‘meh’. It’s not like I have NEVER like cute little babies. I have had two children and as babies I was so in to them that I didn’t even go back to work until my son was 3 years old. But they’re not babies anymore, and I have found myself not liking babies all that much anymore. For a while, I was terrified that I had made a serious life mistake in having children, what if, deep down, I didn’t really like kids? What then?

(My deepest fear has always been that I would turn out like the woman that Cloris Leachman played in the awful movie ‘Hanging Up’. To summarize she left the family while her daughters were still young and during the movie one of the daughters goes to see her. She tries to reconnect over talk of roses, but before they get very far the mother stops her and says “I can’t do this. Be a mother. It just didn’t take.”  I have never forgotten those words. What if I was THAT woman? DEAR GOD, what had I done? Then I realized that I truly, madly, deeply loved my offspring and panic attack over!)

But the problem was soon diagnosed…I simply didn’t care. Now before you start leaving mean comments, it’s not that I don’t care about ANYTHING it’s just that I discovered that I only have a certain amount of caring and most of it was used up on other things (like chocolate). It’s not that I don’t WANT to care but I just can’t, and to force myself to do so would be emotionally exhausting. I think that I have always subconsciously known this. For example, I know many people who are moved by those sponsor-a-child commercials, but not me. I couldn’t bring myself to get worked up. In fact, I would get kind of mad. There are kids in my city that could use money and to me I didn’t know why we send money for kids overseas when kids in our neighborhoods and cities needed money. Perhaps that is another post.

In short, I do not possess an endless amount of caring that some people do. (There is no shame in it, well perhaps there is, but…SURPRISE…I couldn’t care less.) In fact, it’s quite liberating. I can seem callous and unfeeling, but when I tell you that I care about something, you can know I REALLY care about it.

Sometimes, I have to force myself to remember to ask people how their day was if they ask me first. I don’t really want to know how their day was, and I KNOW that they don’t give a shit about mine. Man, small talk is such a waste of time. (This from the person who spends hours typing in 140 characters or less…told ya I was a hypocrite). The point is, forgive me if I forget to ask about your friend’s baby or coo over your new puppy.  But if I ask you how you are doing, you can bet I really want to know.

Bottom line: I don’t like babies and puppies and it’s simply too much work to fake it. Sue me.