Overheard Starbuck

"Who carries more grief: the people who want children but can't have them, or the people who have children but don't want them?"

---"I've heard people who don't have kids say they don't want kids."

"...And I've heard people say they want to have kids or they're trying to have a kid."

---"But I've never heard anyone say they don't want the kids they have."

"Yeah, 'I don't like this kid, can I trade him in for another?'"

---"So unspoken grief beats out socially acceptable grief?"

"People can jones to have a kid their whole lives."

---"'Better to have loved and lost' then?"

"But if were talking about the grief that weighs upon most of the adults on this planet like a fog that never clears, that moves in and takes the form of the child or children it has replaced ...then parenthood."

---"No contest."