My best friend had her first baby last week, and I’m so thrilled I could scream. Motherhood seems somewhat enigmatic to me; seeing as how my closest friend was about to experience it, I couldn’t help but obsess over every little detail and nuance of what it might be like to bring a screaming little life into this world.

I had been looking forward to this day with excitement and apprehension, wondering what on earth I am supposed to do with this child after it was finally born and how I am supposed to relate to it.

Am I supposed to buy him toys that light up or toys that rattle? What if I have to change his diaper and it smells so bad I have to run away and dry heave in the bathroom? What if he grows up and only thinks of me disparagingly as some crazy old feminist hippie?

Whew. If I feel like this, I can’t imagine how my friend must feel. Except I don’t think anyone could accuse her of being crazy.

So here he is — little Kellen Patrick, my honorary nephew. Of course, I haven’t even gotten to see him yet — I had to stay here and go to class instead of drive the two and a half hours back home to be with my friend during the delivery. So I had to miss possibly one of the most heartwarming events of my life just so I could fart around on campus and pretend to do my homework.

What my friend went through in the last nine months in order to bring him into this world and still keep herself sane is amazing to me, and I have to stand in awe of such an accomplishment. I honestly don’t think I would have made it through all that time without wanting to stick my head in an oven or scream at the top of my lungs at every opportunity.

My friend is superhuman. I’m not kidding — she’s absolutely remarkable. First, she underwent the trauma of dealing with the untimely death of her boyfriend. Two weeks later, she found out she was pregnant. To top it all off, she lived miles away from her parents and was stuck with me to try and help her out. Needless to say, I think the support I gave her, while it was the best I could do, was frightfully insufficient for the enormity of the task at hand.

I can’t even begin to fathom the strength and courage it took for her to carry on with her life and have the desire to be a mother besides. I look up to my best friend now in a way I never did before.

So many questions have been raised in my own life because of this situation. Obviously I have all the “necessary equipment” to bear a child, but could I actually be a mother? And I don’t mean a mother who just lets her kids live in the same house she does, but a mother who actually gets involved with her children’s lives and tries to raise them to be rational, logical beings who put their dirty clothes in the laundry hamper and don’t litter.

Do I have the capacity to be so selfless as to basically give up however many years of my life it might take to feed and clothe another human being who is relatively helpless without me to guide them? Should I even be asking these questions of myself at all?

The resounding answer to all of these questions is simply this — I have absolutely no idea. While this isn’t helpful to me in the least, I do at least know one thing: I’m extremely afraid of motherhood.

Here I am, only 20 years old and in the third year of my journalism degree, and a friend of mine who will turn 21 two weeks after I do already has a son. I feel a little immature anticipating going out to the bars on my 21st birthday when my friend has given up things like that to have her child.

Instead of going out on the weekends, she’s staying home. She has eschewed caffeinated pop and junk food for fruit juice and vegetables.

And the worst part is I can tell this experience has changed her forever. Maybe it’s not so bad as it is jarring, simply because I don’t understand it, and I will never understand it unless I go through it myself.

From my perspective, being a mother puts you one step below God — but I can barely decide what I want to eat for lunch, much less make every important decision for someone else.

I was very excited for Kellen’s arrival and I’m sure I’ll fall in love with him the second I see him, but I’m glad I’m not the one who has to make sure he grows up to be a decent human being. That’s too big of a job for me — I’m too busy being concerned about accidentally dropping him on his head and bracing myself for the first time he “burps up” on my shoulder.

I’ll leave the mothering to my friend. Right now, I still need help picking out toys to buy for him. I heard babies respond best to black, white and red because the contrasting colors hold their attention … I’ll try to stick to those, I guess. Blue is highly overrated.