From a seed...

That's where I thought babies came from. I thought the images on the box my Cabbage Patch Kid came in told the whole story. Obviously, babies sprouted in a field of cabbages. Duh, that's what the picture on the box said. Being a smart kid I knew that if there was a baby patch, then there were other components of that scheme. It meant there was a baby farmer and she planted the seeds (Yes, even as a small child the default gender I assigned to professions or fictional people was female. It never occurred to me to assume doctors or farmers or whoever were men. Years later I realized that was a pretty cool mindset to have as a tot.).

Now this baby farmer had to be a hard worker. I knew there were lots of babies sprouting all the time because I knew about the globe and how those different colored blotches were different countries. I even thought those countries had their own version of me. My logic told me that if there was another country on the other side of the world then it must have been the opposite of the one I knew, so there would be another me but she was my opposite. Anyway, those countries all had their own babies, and since there were lots of colored blotches that's a staggering number of babies. I figured in order to make it work efficiently the baby patch was centralized. The baby farmer would give the newly sprouted ones to the storks who would deliver them. At this point I thought they used a transportation system similar to Santa's - you know, all over the place at the same time, that sort of thing. Important note: expectant mothers had big bellies so the storks would be able to see them from the air and know where to drop their deliveries. Total common sense.

The baby farmer was kind of a hero in my eyes because she had this super important job and without her none of us would be around, left to rot in the patch. I wondered a lot about why we never heard anything about her, but we heard about the Tooth Fairy and Santa and that lot all the time. Baby farmer got a raw deal.

When I found out there was no baby farmer and the idea that babies sprouted from seeds was just fantasy I was floored. It really rocked my world because I lost a hero. No baby farmer? Are you kidding me? I had worked out such an elaborate system of how it all worked that finding out it was all in my head was astounding. That's when I started to understand what imagination was. Without a personal hero I had to find someone else to look up to.

Keep in mind I was maybe 6 when all this was going on. I decided my mom would be my new hero. It's been that way ever since. Many of my friends have contentious relationships with their parents and I'm not saying it's always been smooth sailing for us (I was a teenager at some point and I still can't believe she didn't kill me), but we've worked through the junk and we're close. I love my mom. She's a really cool person and I'm lucky to have her. I learned a lot from her as a kid and I still see new things about her as we get older that open my eyes to how dynamic she is. We're going to see my family this weekend and I'm looking forward to seeing my mom the most.

She's way better than the baby farmer. No offense, Sally.