Sometimes I think about all the decisions I’ve made in my life and all the what ifs that litter the way. I mean, what if I’d gone to a different college, chosen a different major, not accepted that job offer…

Sometimes I think that somewhere in a parallel universe there is another me living a completely different life based on some small change in things. Sometimes I think that I can actually talk to that other me and check in on my other life.

Hello there, Sarah Who Had a Child. How is life going with little WhatsHisName? Do you ever wish he’d never been born?

Seeing as how I’m on the brink of another birthday and that old biological clock is winding down, sometimes I get a tiny bit panicked. I didn’t specifically make a decision not to have children. Part of me wants to have one, in fact. But time and situation have not been right and the desire has not burned that brightly.

I think I would enjoy a child; on the other hand, I don’t think I would be unhappy if I never had one. It seems a mistake better made by omission than commission, and so I decline the child.

But I often imagine myself with one. I had such a good time with my mother as a child that I want to repeat the feat with my own. I imagine myself going about my daily life with a child at hand. I imagine the layers of experience and knowledge that I would try to build around my child.

It’s just not the same with a dog.

I remember talking with my cousin’s young daughter at my grandmother’s funeral.  Our wedding had been just a year or so earlier, and we had gotten a dog recently. My little cousin remembered me as the bride, and–perhaps a little confused about things–she asked “and where’s your little baby?” The husband said “oh, he’s in the kennel at home.” She looked at us with the most traumatized expression I’ve ever seen, and didn’t ask us any more questions.