Today I really reached the depth of my human patience. Enough to make me ask myself some of the deepest human questions.

You can’t reach these levels of questioning, or be willing to answer them truthfully, without being pressed over and over again. Repeatedly.

The funny thing is, the day started out happy.

I was flowing. Accumulating my thoughts and pushing out my ideas. The house was full of food. The kids were adequately out of the house enjoying themselves, and I was watching a TV drama that was fairly entertaining.

Everything was fine.

Then my rice got burned through no fault of my own.

My quiet peace got interrupted by my rambunctious kids.

And I just had to press through it all.

Somewhere in the pressing through, I started asking myself some uncomfortable questions.

When my husband and the kids were out of the house and I was home alone watching my series, writing my articles and inventing things, I was so happy.

Then they came home, and I was still happy to see them.

Until they started doing what they usually do.

After years of experience, I now know this is just typical family stuff.

Children come home and immediately begin living in the house.

They move things. Drop things. Eat things. Ask things. Spill things. Hurt themselves. Call you. Tell you something. Forget something. Need help with something else.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I started wondering:

I was genuinely happy when I was here alone.

I was happy when they came back too.

So why did my happiness start disappearing once family life actually resumed?

I think yes.

A husband and wife can love each other deeply. They can build a life together, travel, laugh, work, rest, make plans, grow old together and have real companionship.

So then I ask myself, do children make the couple happier?

That answer does not come so easily.

Because children do not just come along and add happiness on top of an already happy marriage. Parenting does not feel that neat when you are inside it.

To have children is for a husband and wife to decide that they are going to enter another side of companionship together.

And honestly, that part is sweet.

Growing your first baby. Waiting for the baby. Holding this little person and realizing this is yours and your husband’s child.

There is something almost unbelievable about it.

Then more children come.

And more interruptions come.

The rewards can get blurred underneath the work.

There are times when I am hungry, tired, trying to concentrate on something, and somebody needs me again.

Then another one needs me.

Then somebody is asking for food.

Then somebody is crying.

Then somebody wants to tell me something very important at the exact moment I cannot hear another thing.

Their interruptions hit differently when I am already tired.

And this is something I have noticed very clearly.

On a fairly organized day, they are a delight.

When everybody has eaten, when there is some order, when I am not trying to do ten things at once, when I have slept enough to feel like a human being, I experience the exact same children differently.

They play. They climb on us. They talk too much. They say ridiculous things. They invent things. They fight. They make up. They laugh.

And I enjoy them.

Because by the time the day is done and everybody is settled down and sleeping, I am so happy to see each of them.

These fat, juicy, prosperous little people who are mine and my husband’s.

And they love me too.

My fat little juicies love me so much.

They all want to sleep beside me.

They rub my titties to fall asleep.

They kiss my cheeks.

They want to tell me about their day.

They want me.

Even after I get angry with them.

Sometimes I correct one of them and then afterward I sit there questioning myself.

I cross-check myself.

They may cry.

And then somehow that same child comes and curls up beside me afterward.

Or I kiss their cheeks.

Or somebody gets a slice of mango.

And we carry on.

There is a lot of love moving around inside a family.

Sometimes so much of it is buried underneath work that you do not notice it.

I am not only loving these children.

They are loving me too.

And I do.

I know something else very strongly too.

I would not give them back.

Not one.

I may want more sleep.

I may want more uninterrupted time with my husband.

I may want somebody to stop calling me for ten minutes.

I may want to wake up one morning and not immediately have to think about what everybody is going to eat.

But I do not want a life where these people do not exist.

That is where the word happiness starts to feel too small.

We Have a Lot of Years to Live

There is another part of this that is not very deep at all.

We have years to live.

A lot of years.

We need company.

We need people to love and people who love us.

We need somebody to talk to.

Somebody to fuss over.

Somebody to cook something nicer for.

Somebody to surprise.

Somebody to worry about.

Somebody to sit beside.

Somebody whose future matters enough to us that we start thinking harder about how life should be arranged.

A spouse gives us much of that.

But even a husband and wife who love each other deeply are not going to be available to each other at every moment.

I may be excited to tell my husband something at the exact moment he is tired or distracted.

He may want to talk when I am somewhere else mentally.

I may want affection when he wants quiet.

He may be full of energy when I have none left.

That is just human life.

Family spreads life out.

One child wants to sit with you.

Another wants to tell you something.

Your husband takes one of them while you get a little quiet.

You cook while somebody talks to you.

Someone else is laughing in another room.

Later everybody comes back together.

The family absorbs each other and diffuses energy.

Nobody has to be everything to everybody every hour of the day.

There are people around.

Life has somewhere to move.

And really, we get bored.

We need companionship to pass the time.

That sounds almost too simple, but a human lifetime is mostly ordinary days.

Who we spend those ordinary days loving matters.

Family Gives Human Energy Somewhere to Go

A person alone can care about food, shelter, education, land, water, safety, travel, beauty and the future.

But once you love particular people, those things become very concrete.

Family gives human energy somewhere to go.

It gives me people to build for.

People to protect.

People to feed.

People whose comfort matters to me.

People whose future makes me think harder about what kind of life we are creating.

The future gets faces.

Children Expose You

Children expose you too.

You can think you are patient until you hear “Mummy” seventeen times while trying to finish one thing.

You can think you are generous until somebody wants the food you were saving for yourself.

You discover protectiveness you did not know you had.

Children keep pressing buttons you did not know were installed.

Marriage does some of that too.

Children multiply it.

They draw things out of you.

And they make you develop.

You organize better because disorder now affects several people.

You cook better because people you love are eating the food.

You think harder about the house because children are living in it.

You think harder about education because these particular children have to learn.

You think harder about safety because suddenly the world contains people you would fight to protect.

That changes you.

I Want More Children Too

And here is another strange part.

I want more children.

Even knowing exactly what comes with them.

I know the work.

And I do not particularly want more of that.

If somebody offered me more children without pregnancy, birth, sleepless nights, constant cooking and another mountain of daily work, I would be very interested.

That tells me something.

Some of the weariness of family life gets blamed on children when a lot of it is actually coming from the repetitive work around them.

Food has to appear every day.

Clothes have to be washed.

People have to be bathed.

Somebody has to remember things.

Somebody has to plan ahead.

Somebody has to think about what happens tomorrow.

Sometimes the hardest part of family is not loving the family.

It is servicing the family.

That can wear you out.

But being worn out does not mean I wish the people away.

Another Side of Marriage

Children also change companionship between husband and wife.

We are no longer only loving each other.

We are loving other people together.

We are raising them together.

We are learning them together.

We are worrying about them together.

We are solving problems for them together.

We are watching these little people grow while also watching each other become parents.

That gives us a kind of companionship we did not have before.

There are memories that belong only to us because nobody else was there.

The child who looks exactly like one of us when angry.

The strange habit both of us noticed at the same time.

The moment one parent looks across the room at the other because the child has said something completely ridiculous.

We build a private history together.

But children can also bury the marriage under work.

That is another contradiction.

A husband and wife may be doing more together than ever before and still feel like they have less time together than ever before.

You can become very good at running a family while barely sitting down with each other.

You can spend the whole day serving the same people and still miss each other.

I understand that much better now.

The children become part of the companionship between husband and wife, but they can also swallow up nearly all the space where the original companionship used to happen.

Both things are true.

So Do Children Make Us Happier?

I still do not think that is the right question.

Ask me when I am hungry, tired, trying to work and being interrupted for the sixth time and I may tell you children make life much harder.

Ask me on a peaceful day when everybody has eaten and the house has some order and the children are laughing, and I will tell you they are one of the sweetest parts of my life.

Ask me at night when they are sleeping and I can look at them without anybody asking me for anything, and I know immediately that I want them here.

Every one of them.

And strangely enough, I want more.

I just do not particularly want more pain, more sleeplessness, more cooking and more work.

So this is where I have landed for now.

Children do not simply make a person happier.

They fill life with people.

Sometimes family is exhausting.

Sometimes it is noisy.

Sometimes I want everybody to leave me alone.

Sometimes I want another baby.

All of these things are true at once.