Patricia Brennan (PB) and Connor Murphy (CM)

CM: If you could like do anything again, um, would you raise me differently?

PB: Only if I was absolutely sure you’d be exactly as you are right now ‘cause you are just a great kid.

You know I wasn’t going to have any children. Aunt Bridget and Aunt Eileen — they were like 10 or 15 years younger than me so I knew when I was growing up how complicated babies were and that they cried a lot. And I was a career lady, I had my teaching and my research and I was very successful early in my career. And then I met Daddy. And um, after a couple months I said, you know just want you to know, I’m not going to have any children and so if you think you want to have children, you’d better find another girlfriend because as much as I love you I don’t think I’ll ever have children. And then about a year later, I just –

CM: Like just like said OK!

PB: No I just – because Daddy would never – Daddy never asked me about having children. I just woke up one morning and I could think about nothing but having a child. And I wanted to have a child with Daddy. And so I said, “Well, Daddy, I changed my mind.” – I didn’t call him Daddy then. “I changed my mind. I’d like to have a baby. Would that be alright with you?” And he said, “Well sure!”

And then I said, “Well, I’d like you to…we think raising children…we both had the same values about it…somebody needed to stay home and raise the child.” So I said, “Well, would you mind quitting your job and staying home?” And he said, “Well, sure I’ll do that too.”

And it was a very fast decision – there was no hesitancy…and never looked back, never changed my mind.

The only thing that I would change now is I would have had you when I was younger. It was nice to have you when I was forty, but I sometimes I think – well I wonder what it would have been like if I had had Connor when I was 30, or when I was 20… because then we would have been growing up in a different way together.