Swing away.

Wasn't that what the dying wife in the movie Signs said? "Tell (I forget his name) to swing away"? Or whatever?

I might be making that up. There's been a serious lack of sleep in my life lately, due to strange dreams where everyone has this other alien, strange creature living inside their body in a bubble, and people have to talk to these creatures and clear everything with them, like, "Hey, Mr. Bubble, do you think we should have milk or water?" and it's all really distracting for me because while I'm dreaming these dreams I'm so put out thinking that it's all so fucking inconvenient and pointless, because what difference does it make? And then I realize (while still dreaming) that the dreams are all kind of really obviously about my pregnancy because I call my belly Mr. Bubble and being pregnant is just like having some weird creature living inside of you, so I'm kind of lamenting the entire time I'm asleep that I'm not really very deep or original and that my subconscious mind is SO. FUCKING. BORING. And anyway, it's none too restful.

So yeah. I'm tired.

What I was starting to say was that I intend to do like the dying lady said and swing away from the seriousness that's been going on around here lately, but instead of Light and Jovial, I seem to have wandered into Strange and Confused. Which, yeah. I'm comfortable there. Hell, I've got a summer home there. I spend every freakin' weekend there. I just kind of didn't mean to bring you with me.

Bygones.

Anyway, what I meant to convey was that I don't mean to be so down and dreary, ruminating about my past and my childhood and my family issues. They've just been on my mind a lot lately, as I'm about to shape a childhood of my own and speaking of which! I just remembered my original point when I sat down to post this but then thought it was maybe a titch too heavy. I'm obviously throwing that out the window now, though, so here goes.

I saw a question posed today on a blog I read. Someone said that they were going to give their children the best of everything; the most love, attention, adoration, security, etc, because their childhood had been so bad and they had never had those things themselves. The response from a commenter was that the author had made him wonder whether happy childhoods had to come from an unhappy childhood before them. Meaning, did my childhood have to suck in order for me to want so badly to make my kid's life easier than mine was?

At first, I agreed with that. I thought, hey, that's pretty deep. Now I think it's not deep, but rather ridiculous. I'm sure there are plenty of people that had perfectly balanced, 'normal' developmental periods in their lives and went on to use those years as a foundation on which to build a happy childhood for their own offspring. I don't think you need to have been warped in some way in order to piece something happy together for your kids, not at all.

It was an interesting question, none the less. What do you think? Do happy children have to come from parents who had something missing, so they know what's important? Or can people who've had a less obviously traumatic time of things go on to give the same steady, peaceful childhood to their children because it is all they know?