What's your name? Who's your daddy?

As far as fathers go, maybe there are two types of guys. The knock ‘em up kind and the family man.
Two of my friends are victims of the knock ‘em ups. My best friend has a little girl. The father is nowhere to be found until he gets mad about something and takes his anger out by attempting to get custody, which everyone knows will never happen because he has not paid a cent of child support for any of the sixteen months this precious child has been alive. One of my other close friends is expecting. The daddy-to-be is sticking around to take responsibility for it, but I’m not sure how responsible it is for him to get stoned and play video games while she tries to show him the things that she picked out for the nursery.
I, however, think what I may be dealing with is a family man. My love and I talked about children today. We did not really talk about having children together; it was more of a “this is how I see my life panning out…” kind of conversation. He wants to start a family by the time he turns twenty-five. He is twenty-two now. So that leaves three years. He wants to be married before he has kids, so given that timeline, he will probably want to get married in a year or two. It brings endless joy to my heart to know that the timeline he is aiming to work with puts me right smack dab in the middle of it all. While it is completely unrealistic to talk about marriage at the moment, in the grand scheme of things, it is entirely logical to think that if this relationship progresses, I could quite honestly be facing a marriage proposal in the next year or so. Another thing that makes me hopeful is when he talks about the things we will do this Christmas, next New Year’s, or next Valentine’s and the places we will visit together throughout our lifetime. He sees me in his future, and that has given me a lot of faith about this relationship. He wants me around as much as I want him around.
Do not think that I am putting all my eggs in one basket or counting my chickens before they hatch, or anything else that has to do with poultry. I am not counting on this, nor do I expect it. But, it is a wonderful thing to hope for, and we’ll always have Paris.
Ah, Paris. I spoke with him today about going. We will go next year as soon as he gets out of the army. We decided we would go for about three weeks. I told him that this was not a matter to joke about. Not something to promise with no intention of delivering. He was very serious and told me that he was not joking about it, and I best not be either because he, too, has his heart set on going. That made me trust him on it that much more.
I was telling a friend about the trip, and what she had to say about it made me smile: “Maybe he’ll propose there.” I told her that it was way too soon to even think that far ahead, but I admitted that after the conversation I had with him today, I had the same wishful thought. I think what makes me the happiest about the whole idea is the fact that he is the marrying kind. He is the kind of man you want to make a family with.