I don’t want children.

But if I had children, I would read to them, from the beginning. Rowling, and Tolkien, and Madeline L’Engle. Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman. Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum and Arthur Conan Doyle. Bill Watterson. So many others. We would hang out in libraries, and I wouldn’t feel ashamed and hush them if their voices were too loud.

I don’t want children, but if I had children, I would take them to the woods and build fairy houses, and teach them to climb trees, and hold their hands as they clambered across fallen logs like balance beams.

I don’t want children but if I had children I would dress them in bright colors until they learned how to dress themselves. Yellows and greens and blues and reds. I’d teach them how to knit. I’d teach them how to teach themselves how to knit. We’d visit thrift shops and try on jackets. I’d try to teach them about the versatility of button-downs and they would roll their eyes at the void where my fashion sense should be.

I don’t want children but if I had children I’d sing to them at night until they were old enough to remember it after they’d grown up.

I don’t want children, but if I had children I would sit on the floor with them and teach them how to draw pictures on rainy days. I’d teach them about numbers and fractions and algebra and calculus. We’d watch science documentaries, and make the Socratic method into a game for long car rides. I’d try to teach them how to think.

I don’t want children but if I had children I would want to shove them out into the world. I would give them space and time to wander and get lost. I would coax them out of their comfort zones. I would let them make mistakes and figure things out for themselves. And I would let them exist separately from me.

But you can be damn sure I would give them a safe place to come home to.

There would be chickens, and a muddy back yard with a creek and lots of trees, and there would be dogs and cats and possibly alpacas or maybe goats. There would be a radio long after radios were obsolete. There would be the smell of a wood stove burning and coffee brewing and bread baking and something simmering on the stove.

I don’t want children I don’t want children I don’t want children

They’d be too much like me.