When we decided to become a household of three, I didn’t think about auspicious days or the best time of year to be born, I didn’t think of zodiac signs and what is most compatible among the Lunar calendar’s animals. I didn’t much think, except to say that no amount of thinking would ever make the decision for us. Mike was the one who knew though, always with clarity about how this should go down.

So when we crossed the threshold last week from the year of the rat into the year of the ox, I was surprised at how panicked I was, how I was scrambling to do research to give me a sign, any sign, if this baby is going to be compatible with me, with Mike, with our combination. He’s a sheep and I’m a monkey, generally ok on the copacetic spectrum, annoying one another because of spontaneity (me) and whatever the opposite of spontaneity is (him). But ox – what this baby will be – and sheep, no good, apparently. Maybe both too stable and reliable for each other, one a perfectionist the other a get er done kind of approach, one prone to indulgences and the other to minimalism. Monkey and Ox on the other hand, total harmony, like the two scales balancing each other out. A perfect match.

Maybe that fact alone is the missing piece in all my hesitancies about becoming a parent. Maybe it’s THE sign that this is meant to be.