Every morning I wake up and lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Before I get up and start my day I close my eyes and I say a prayer. I don’t pray to any deity or higher power. My prayer is to myself. I pray to be the best father, lover, friend, son and computer consultant I can be. It feels like I am asking myself to be better.  I feel like asking the same thing of myself day after day actually helps me to be the thing I am trying to be.

For the last year I have been in a wonderful relationship with a wonderful woman. She really is everything I want in a partner, patient, funny, caring and most importantly she laughs at my bad jokes. When I get low blood sugar and start yelling and acting like an ass, she carefully stops what we are doing and prepares some food.  We met at Ecstatic dance and dancing has been a very big part of our relationship. We work well together and whether we are editing her book for months on end or putting up a ceiling on her cabin it seems like we work quite well together. At least as well as anyone could possibly be expected to be working with me. It’s strange to look at yourself and be acutely away of how impossible you are to deal with.

Every day we have been together I’ve prayed to myself and asked myself “Should I have a child with Thilde?” The answer has always been “Not yet”. On Dec 7th something really amazing happened. I said that prayer and the answer was “Yes”. I was a little shocked and didn’t tell her about it.  The next day I prayed the same prayer and the answer was the same. So now I’m at another major crossroads of my life. I have finally decided that I am ready to go through the whole diaper changing, sleep deprivation insanity that is raising another child. I think that any sane person who had one child would never want to repeat the experience, but here I am on the crux of making what is the biggest decision in my life. I have no idea if I’m making the right choice, but when I ask myself the answer is Yes and no longer No. I fantasized so many nights about having my life back and being able to do whatever I want all the time once Orion starts college. I watch my friends travel the world and have all these amazing experiences and here I am willing to forgo all these experiences and trade them instead for the singularly unique experience of raising a child.

Dec 7th will be marked in my calendar as ‘conception day’. I will celebrate it together with my family not as a birthday and not as the day that the child was conceived with the combining of egg and sperm. Instead we will celebrate it as the day that I was willing to make space in my life once again for another being to be raised, loved, lavished on and disciplined. The day that I was able to imagine my future with another child in it.

Of all the things I have ever done in this world, raising a son has been by far the most enjoyable and rewarding thing I have done. Being a single a parent who has chosen to home-school their own child has been  just a little bit challenging. Time and again I have stepped up, even when my sanity slipped away I never lost sight of what was really important. Raising a happy, healthy child that was able to function effectively in the world.

So many things to do in this life, so many indulgences. Nice cars, places to go and see, people to meet and money to be made. None of these things has ever brought me any real lasting satisfaction.

Family.

Family really is everything to me.

I’ll sacrifice everything that life has to offer just to experience it again.

I know it’s a decision I will never regret making.