Why?

Why have d and I resisted becoming parents for so long when we both love kids enough to spend our lives working with them? What lurks in both our pasts that scared us away from this experience that I now crave so much I can scarcely breathe sometimes? What caused the huge pools of pain that we have tried to avoid by just loving other people's children? Why has it taken me until I am on the verge of what feels like too late to figure out that I don't want a quiet, orderly, peaceful life? I want a big, close, connected family, the kind that neither d nor I grew up in, and the kind I know we both idolize. I'm sending this wish out into the universe, a wish for a noisy house with flourishing kids who are going to grow up to like each other and who will want to spend Sunday dinners with us and each other. I want big noisy holidays with all the trimmings. I want dogs running through a kitchen where pancakes are sizzling on a griddle and the laughter is loud. And I really don't have to have our own kids; I just want kids.