adventuring

Last week when I was at school, I was talking with two friends of mine when a woman rushed up to me.

"Excuse me," she said, a little embarassed, "but are you a law student here?"

"Yes," I said, "though not this semester."

She smiled. "I'm sorry, you're going to probably think this is really weird, and honestly I don't go around randomly assaulting pregnant women. But, um, I just wanted to know, so you got pregnant in law school?"

"Yes," I said, "I was pregnant all second semester."

"Well, I'm so glad I saw you!" She beamed. "I'm a 1L, and I've thought about having kids in school, but everybody thought I was crazy, and it's just nice to know I'm not the only one who thought about it."

She paused. "So, how are you going to do It?"

I didn't wonder what It meant. Any woman who wants kids knows what It means. It means when, It means how, and It means a million other unanswerable questions.

I shrugged. "I don't know."

I've been asked the question before. How are you going to do It?

Sometimes I wish I knew. Usually, though, I think life would be boring if I knew all the answers ahead of time.

When I get intimidated by what's coming, when I'm scared that I can't do It, I think about traveling. Sometimes my journeys didn't work out so well, like the time I was stranded at 3:30 am in the middle of winter in a rural Polish train station, my only company the two local town drunks and a toothless prostitute. I was twenty years old, alone, and terrified.

But the drunks were friendly and the prostitute tried her broken English on me. What started out as a disaster turned into a bright story to remember. At the time I remember cursing myself for thinking that a mid-winter jaunt to Krakow on the cheap local train would be fun. "I could be at home now," I kept thinking, "warm in bed, and safe." That was true enough. But if I had stayed warm in bed and safe, I wouldn't remember the shy prostitute telling me haltingly, "My name, it Kashia."

I don't know how I'm going to do It, but that's the thrill of going on an adventure.