Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where there is not enough time in a day to do all the things one feels one should, so one ends up choosing what one should do with ones self, and in the end, the house stays messy and the laundry goes undone.

We are suddenly over winter. Snow does not excite us. We wish for dry trails and days off. We dream of warm weather. We talk of moving, as we do every year at this time. We have gotten through our next-to-last winter here many times already. I say next-to-last because we never have quite enough money to leave this year, and care too much about our boss to just spring it on him that we are leaving without a long notice and one season of training replacements, but there's always next year- if we work hard and save every dime we make, we might have enough in the bank account for a fresh start somewhere else. And we can always do just one more- as long as it is only one more.

Work is never ending. No day off this week. We have gotten spoiled this winter by forcing ourselves to take one day off-usually Tuesdays, since that is the slowest day of the week. But President's Day Weekend started the rush that will not end until after Spring Break season, so it is possible that we will not get a day off for another six weeks. I have cut my hours at the ski shop to only three 7:30am to 11:00am shifts per week, and rush from one job to the next, and Andy gets a walk maybe once a week these days. But that will change. Next year. After next season.

We have spent almost a decade in Summit County. We have grown as people and we have been through some wonderful times and some horrible times in the shadows of the Gore and Ten-mile Ranges. Buffalo Mountain watched over us our first years here, it's twin slide paths stark white. We watched the light from the sunrise creep down her and the sun set behind her as we learned to know each other, shared a house as newlyweds with other people and let the worst of ourselves finally be shown to each other. Then we moved, and the Contenintal Divide stood over us as we stabilized in our own relationship, then excluded the world and our circle of friends shrank. Then we moved again, and Red Mountain looked down on us, offering all the beauty of the Eagles Nest Wilderness out our back door, a door that was revolving with friends and roomates while the two of us grew apart and forgot to care. The trails into the Wilderness overheard our fights as we tried to decide what to do with ourselves, then witnessed us finding out, all over again, how much we meant to each other. And now we live under the watchful poses of the twin beauties Guyot and Baldy, in a comfortable place, an entire house to ourselves. The trails accomodate two, and we agree with each other, and it feels like a good place to be in. Buffalo Mountain's slide paths are no longer as stark white in the winter, the trees have come back and have grown higher than the snow that once covered them in the winter. Pine beetles have moved in and trees have died by the millions. Death and rebirth and almost a decade of watching it happen.

I have grown as an individual. I am more self aware, and more independant than when we moved here. I am more confidant. Even the tourists recognize me as a local. Maybe it's all the duct-taped gear. Summit County feels like home. But maybe something is broken, because most people do not want to leave home, do they?

We talk about how our lives are flying by us at whirlwind pace, how we are knocking on thirty, how moving up here was a grand adventure, but now, it feels like every new adventure is just another variation on adventures already had.

There could be kids, yes, as almost every person we know is happy to point out. A new adventure. And it's true, to see the world through my child's eyes would be a new adventure. Dirty hands and sticky faces and leggos and dolls and impossibly short skis with adorably boxy ski boots. But the truth is, I see that, and I see parents interacting with their children, and while it all seems very sweet, it does not fill me with longing. It doesn't open up an aching hole where my heart should be, a hole that could only be filled with my own offspring. Yes, I want to provide grandchildren for our parents before they are too old. I want to hold family together with children. I totally get the miracle of looking at something that is half you and half the person you love, that perfect, tiny piece of the future, and feeling as though you have done what you were put here to do. I get it... in my head. I can imagine those feelings almost as vividly as the real thing. I get all the conventional thinking, that the only way to be truly blessed is by having kids, but this odd tug at the edges of my conciousness asks me, in ever louder whispers, if this is true, why does my entire world not revolve around it? Why do I feel whole when totally alone under a mountain sunset? Why does being alone with my husband so often feel like just the medicine I need? Why doesn't being around other people's children stir some primal maternal instinct inside me? I can adore them for what they are, tiny humans, distinct personalities, open minds, but tiny, pudgy hands and pug noses, rosebud lips and big eyes do not necessarily trigger some sort of gushing response.

Due to some unexplained glitch in my body's normal functioning a year and a half ago, I thought I was pregnant for a few days, and I went from "oh, no" to "halleluja" in about 12 hours. I felt part of something bigger than me. I felt all glowy and in love with the world because now I was part of a legacy. I felt infatuated with the thought that there was another human being growing inside me, and honestly, a little infatuated with myself. And then all the tests came back negative and I took some progesterone pills, the symptoms went away, things started functioning again, and I had a good, hysterical meltdown and convinced a confused, shellshocked Bobby that we should try for real. Which we did, for all of a month. And then one morning, I took the dog for a walk, went mountain biking and had a drink with a friend, came home and cuddled on the couch with my husband, and felt like myself again. As suddenly as they had come, the desparate feelings were gone. Try as I might, I couldn't get them back. We talked about making a baby, and I felt a pang of fear that we might be successful. I couldn't make myself feel like I had when I thought I was pregnant. I couldn't make myself want it anymore. I wondered who that person was.

Selfish. That is the automatic response when I try to articulate these feelings. I am selfish. I have no thought for the future. Do I not want people around me when I am old? Do I not want to create a soul for all eternity?

It's true that I am a selfish person. But in this area, I don't know. If it was ever proven beyond just our grandparent's view on children- that it is a selfish way to live, to not have them- I might bite. But I can't help thinking about it from angles that are more intellectual and less instinctual. No matter if I agonize over the decision and finally have a child or two or a half-dozen, the couple down the street will still have their 9th. Some middle-aged mother on fertility treatments will still have quintuplets. Some drug-addled mother in the inner city will have a deformed child that will never know love. AIDS babies will continue to be born in Africa. Eastern European orphanages will still overflow with children hoping against hope that every visitor will be the one to take them home. In view of that, it honestly seems more selfish for me to want that moment of mommy-glow that comes with seeing your own child, the one you just pushed out of your own body that nobody has damaged yet. To look at it harshly, this child is a genetic experiment that every person is hardwired to want to have- they want to see themselves in their child.

There is only so much food in the world. In order for me to feed the darling, sweet-smelling, innocent, perfect, silken-skinned tiny version of myself and my life mate, I am taking food out of the mouth of another child who already lives, already knows cruelty and hunger and pain and neglect. I am spending money that, if I had any real awareness of the rest of the world, I would have gladly shared, doing my part to help a child who's life is now just a tiny bit more bearable. And if I can't feel whole unless I am a caregiver, there is nothing less selfish than taking a few of those unloved children into one's own home and loving them and letting them know they are yours, only yours, and by choice, not because they were the next best option after you found that you were unable to have your own.

I am sorry if this seems like a judgemental tirade to those who have a boatload of their own kids. It isn't. There comes a time when matters of the heart take precedence over matters of the mind. When to hold your own baby in your arms is the most important thing to you, and something you will never feel whole without. It is okay. You are not dooming society, at least not any more than everyone else already has. I do not judge you. But I would judge me if I were to give in to what everyone thinks is best for me, instead of listening to what my heart is telling me. And what it is telling me, I do not know yet.

Bobby admits to feeling a bit of curiosity, a bit of adoration for that unborn tiny version of him or me, and says it is an experience he would feel a bit cheated out of it it were to not happen. But in the next breath, he says he does not yet feel like the type of person he would need to be for that adorable unborn human. He is not yet enough in love with him or her to make a drastic change to accomodate the new addition. And if the time should pass for us, he understands my want to help those already in the world over creating more humans and would gladly adopt.

And now, whew! This post has taken an unexpected turn. I did not plan to expose myself and my twisted thoughts on conventional wisdom. I did not plan to be so harsh. My thoughts just took off an their own after about two paragraphs and unbidden, my fingers kept time. And now it is time to go to work, make the money, pay the bills, and maybe, just maybe, plan the great escape.