Precursor to Thirty-Five

I am incredibly comfortable with the idea that I don't really want biological children. Incredibly comfortable with it. I have been incredibly comfortable with it for a long time, though I very much hope to adopt when I'm in my forties. However, adoption as a single woman can be hard, and it's a risk to get approved. But people ask me, and I say "I've never really felt the urge children for more than a couple of minutes. I love children, and families, I just personally don't want to have them any time soon."

But those couple of minutes where I feel the urge?

They are, religiously, during any kind of home renovation show on TLC when they show the newly remodeled kitchen, always designed for the family to commune in.

It's fail proof, really. Quite possibly because the kitchen was the place where you communed in my home growing up (as I'd guess it is in most homes). You'd cook, or mom would cook, or there would be tea water in the kettle on the stove, and you'd sit around the table with whomever was there, and that was that. And it was perfect. I don't remember much of my maternal grandparents' home because my grandmother got sick when I was very young, but the kitchen being a communal point was true in my paternal grandparents' house as well. I'm sure it is in most homes.

And so, when "Trading Spaces" or "Moving Up" or "Extreme Home Makeover" or "While You Were Out" creates a perfect family kitchen, I feel my biological clock begrudgingly tick-tock into action for about three minutes.

Then a commercial for a vacation package to Tahiti comes on and it slows back down to a grinding halt.

And then I go to bed at night and lay awake, wondering if I'll really be okay with myself if I give up the chance for memories in kitchens with teenage kids altogether, scenes from the Walsh home in "90210" flashing through my head. And then I am not so incredibly comfortable.

35 is a strange age. I'm still a handful of days away, and already I don't like it.