Reincarnation Goals

Today I am pondering the afterlife,

As I sit here being a goodly housewife.

Which place would I rather be?

In a cave or under the sea?

We just returned from a trip to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. During the two-hour car ride there and back, Brian listened to John Lee Hooker and fantasized about Arizona, John alternately napped and screamed bloody murder, and I read the second in the Earth’s Children series by Jean M. Auel (charming yet cheesy stories about the Ice Age). During this trip I made some very important decisions about the afterlife: My reincarnation goal is to either live in a cave or under the sea.

Let’s address the cave issue first. I was talking to my mommy friend Ashley about my new favorite book series and we were trying to discern why I’m so fascinated with the late Pleistocene Epoch (extending from 35,000 to 25,000 before present), and finally she came to this conclusion: As a mother, the lifestyle of hunter-gatherer women is unbelievably appealing because they raise babies together! None of this isolationist stuff of stay-at-home moms in the modern world where we speak in terms of breakdown ratios (mine is 1:5 days, but Ash, who’s been doing this mommy thing for a little longer is down to 1:9 – you go girl!).

Now communal cave inhabitation may not be what Hillary Clinton was talking about in It Takes a Village, but it’s a step in the right direction. I imagine it as sort of like a permanent La Leche League meeting where men get to participate at times by bringing in large hunks of meat for us to cut up and cook. So if you find a good cave, claim it and send directions. I’m on my way.

Besides contemplating the Ice Age on our vacation, the aquarium itself offered some fodder for the fertile ground of my craving-an-outlet brain … SEAHORSES.

The seahorse dream is very different. It is not a lifestyle change, but a biological one. Male seahorses are an anomaly in nature: they get pregnant! The females deposit eggs in the males’ pouch where they are fertilized. The male grows them for a while and then actually labors and delivers the little salt-water equines. Now I’m all about that. Talk about a goal for modern fertility clinics. If we can replace people’s knees with synthetic materials, then why can’t we create a synthetic male uterus? Fertilization outside the human body has already been accomplished; it’s just the gestational location that needs more work. A male delivery would have to be caesarean, but who cares? Lots of women are scheduling their deliveries anyway and choosing C-sections over vaginal births. This would be no different. Who do we know in graduate school for biology? Who has a contact? Let’s get on this. Start networking girls!

No, no, no. I can’t advocate for wangling with the human reproductive system! I almost forgot—I’m against bio-engineering and other mother-nature finagling. Hmmm, what could I be for instead? Aha! The intermarrying of women and male seahorses! Or, a new market for real estate agents … caves! Well, there you have it, because let’s face it girls: the hunter-gatherer or seahorse lifestyle may leave some things to be desired, but in the end, neither of those groups can tout husband eaters.

Tune in next time when Kimpossible muses on the combination of heavy aftershave and the yogic practice of alternating nostril breathing. Until then, onward, upward, caveward, seaward, and of course ... happy HEing.