Inclusive fitness

Tomorrow, my oldest daughter moves out. My youngest child is still wearing diapers. This is a mighty spread of years. What am I doing? What was I thinking? I suppose the obvious answer is that there was not much thinking going on at all. But I do remember the doubts I had in both cases, as the new little beings crackled into life inside their mother's wombs. With my first, I doubted myself. Was I ready to be a parent? (no). Was I prepared to make a lifelong commitment to her mother? (no). With the last (yes! The last!) I doubted the world. Would it last long enough for him? (I don't know) Would the carnage wrought by my generation and the generation before mine be enough to prevent him from reaching middle age? (I don't know)

The funniest part of all of that is that it feels like some kind of warped progress. It's not me I doubt anymore. I know what I am and what I can do (and also what I'm not and can't). It's the world I've helped to create that I doubt. I tell myself that provided he can live long enough to catch his breath when he sees Cezanne's apples, or laugh out loud when he looks at Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie and 'gets' it, then it will be worth it for him even if, later, his lungs stop working because there's no air left to breathe or his stomach digests itself because there's nothing left to eat. That's what I tell myself. Over and over and over again.