Vanessa had wanted a baby so badly, and although we were both young—far too young to have started a family—conceiving didn’t come easy. It wasn’t as simple as shooting sperm through her cervix, but we were never ones to shy away from challenges. A baby stopped being the goal. Making a baby was all we could see. We didn’t do the grueling things our neighbors are doing today, but Vanessa did endure a few rounds of Clomid after getting her fallopian tubes flushed. Determination usurped ambivalence. True achievers, we wanted success.

We got Jonah. He was extraordinary. He was darling, of course, but he would cry and cry and nothing would soothe him in that first month. We were certain it was colic or some gastrointestinal problem, but the pediatrician said, “No, he’s just a baby.”

Babies cry, we learned. Babies, much like puppies, keep owners up all night; they vomit and defecate when it’s inconvenient and urinate where we’re expected to clean it up. In no time, they want chew toys. They break Limoges boxes and shred magazines. They want attention, and when they don’t get it, they whine. They beg for indigestible treats, but we are supposed to feed them very particular foods at regular intervals, or else, because that’s our job, don’t fuck it up. They need vaccines, socialization, discipline, and fresh air, and so we work our asses off to give them all these things and more: education, vacations, culture, comfort. We love them with every atom of ourselves because we have to—because if we allow for even the slightest possibility that we don’t know why we did this, our whole reason for being would collapse. So we tell other parents the same thing they tell us, which is that we wouldn’t trade it for the world. We tell ourselves this because we don’t have a choice, because there’s no trade on the table.

Tutors, training, lessons, braces, a new car, a new computer, the latest software, the latest trend, seven thousand lunches, seven thousand dinners, fifty-odd pairs of shoes, countless tanks of gas, lift tickets, Christmas presents, birthday parties, warmth, and water. We give commands—Sit, Stay—and teach them tricks: multiplication tables, long division, grammar, manners, how to be liked, how to get accepted, how to get ahead in the real world. Before the real world, though, there’s college. Assuming he manages to make it out in four years, Jonah’s undergrad will run me a quarter of a million dollars, and because I’ve worked tirelessly to make all this money to pay for all his stuff, we won’t qualify for desirable scholarships or grants.