4AM and counting...

Tick...tick...tick...tick.

That's what a clock would sound like by my bed if I had one there.
But that would suggest we were still stuck in , at the very least, the 70s.
I have an iPhone by my bed, silently kicking out possibly hazardous radiation to my sleeping brain only a foot away from the night stand.It has no "Tick", only a loud halogen glow that kicks out the "applications on demand" I've downloaded to it.
and when I want to wake up? Yup... a downloaded sound of a 1970's alarm clock ringing.

I'm up writing this right now because I couldn't sleep. Couldn't sleep because my partner and I went to bed at 10:10 PM, a nontraditional early hour for us to go to bed, so I've already had my 6 hours of sleep and though tired still, on some internal level- I'm up typing about how I can not sleep at 5AM.

If I was a mother, I'd probably be up anyway, nursing or feeding or rocking or whatever mother's typically do at pre-dawn hours. If I had a toddler, I'd probably make breakfast and then take them outside with me to watch the sun rise. I might even go for an early morning walk with them and smile as they hear birds for the first time, or feel the still dewy air or watch amused to their reaction as a neighbor's dog their walking before work sticks its wet nose inside the stroller.
But I'm not a mother...so I won't … and there it is.
A beautiful successful single woman friend recently asked , "why do we have children? I mean really? Why?"
I've pondered this question myself, as I'm sure every other woman who’s closing in on 40 , or just past , has asked too. I can only come up with the following reasons:

1.We want to believe that some part of our selves is left behind to accomplish things we didn’t get around to doing, or were never brave enough to try.
2.We want the unconditional love guaranteed by the branding into every child’s psyche that’s treated even half way right .
3.We’re tired of being stuck in our own head figuring out how to make ourselves more …bionic.
4.We don't want to die alone.

I’m sure that actual mothers would vehemently disagree with me about the above list, and that’s fine. I’m sure their reasons include nurturing, experiencing and loving having that family element which only increases the joy that one experiences in the lives that they’ve already lived…and a bunch of other Betty Crocker reasons that are beyond my Easy Bake oven existence. I’m also guessing that the 5 reasons I’ve listed above are also the exact reasons why I would have a child, thereby making it clear I should not become a parent.
I don’t want a kid or kids to be my greatest accomplishment…necessarily.

I want to do all the things I've dreamed of doing since I was a child; whether or not those dreams were encouraged by what my parents didn't achieve, I’m not sure entirely. I want to help the world, make a difference, the usual things that one day, on your death bed you look back on and say, “yeah, I did good- it was a good run.”

It's 6AM. Time to make my man's lunch for him to take to work.