I think it is true. I can say it. I will not have a baby. It's ok – not sad – just different.
Oh I know what you are going to say, “Ah Molly, you are not that old, you can still have a baby.” Ehh, you don’t get it. It’s ok. Really it is.
If I had really wanted a child, or was meant to have one – I like to think that I would have had one (or two) by now. I would have made it happen. Like those women who seem driven to it? They have Rubbermaid containers of baby clothes they purchased over the years stored under their beds, and they have made their siblings store all those old baby things in their basement - for them forever. Not me!
Sure I have thought about it - when my friends and siblings were banging them out. I got those jealous ideas that I was missing out on something, that I wanted to know what it was like to have those little arms wrapped around my neck or that little head sleeping on my shoulder… but it was never enough to cause me to do anything about it.
Also, I have actually not been very conscious of time – have you? I think those truly baby driven women are. It is like, they set a timer on their blackberries and when the Beethoven's 5th Symphony starts to play they switch gears and focus all of that energy that was once directed on climbing the ladder at work and the stair master at the gym, on their temperature, mucus, ovulation, semination and pregnancy.
Not Me!
And after all, if it was my destiny to have children – – god’s will – – I think I would have gotten pregnant after one of those slutty drunken nights trying to prove to my sorority sisters that I wasn’t a lesbian.
Nope, I was never driven to it -- but I always kept the idea open… I have a hard time saying no to anything - so maybe?
Why am I talking about this? blah blah blah!
I’m 43 in less than a month.
I was 18 when my Mom was 43 – with 5 kids, the youngest 17 and the oldest 22! My mom – 43 and going back to school for a masters in nursing. 43 with so many tangible and living, breathing, handsome, funny, lying, lazy, flunking out, HUMAN accomplishments to show for her 43 years.
This conversation is predictable, cliché right? All of us middle-agers fall into this trap – and begin to contemplate our lives and what good things we accomplished. You know, it happens about the time you start to realize that you actually just don’t give a shit about work anymore. That getting the promotion - the title is actually not that glamorous. So you start looking around and making an assessment about your life.
The ones with kids – they go through it too. The stay at home moms, look with jealous eyes at the ones who have careers and start to wonder what could have been.
But see – this is where our likeness ends. Because they have an emotional out from the downward spiral of self-defamation and feelings of doomed mediocrity. Oh you know the out. You have heard them. “Well, at least I have got my kids”. “Oh, you just don’t know what I mean unless you are a mother”
Ugh!
The rest of us, we just have to keep spiraling and searching to find meaning in our lives. Searching for our thing that we can say “You just would not know unless you lived it”. We keep working out, applying creams and getting skin peels and Botox, spending hundreds of dollars on the thigh buster and that thing that the pony tail guy sells. But the truth is that we will never have that witness to our lives. Those breathing, handsome, funny, lying, lazy, flunking out, HUMAN versions of part of ourselves who we can count on to spend thanksgiving with when we are old and boring.
I will not have a baby! I will never have children. I will always be childless – barren- lonely. I may become that weird aunt. The one that children can’t take their eyes off – like a big hairy mole on someone’s face.
You know her.
With the whiskers coming out of her chin and the fuzzy patch of hair above her lip that is just a bit too dark for a woman.
The one in the polyester pants suit with the stretchy waist band.
The one that everyone wonders about- but never says anything but “ah, she never married because her high school sweetheart died in the war or some freak accident.
So Wait. Who am I kidding? I am already that weird Aunt. But not like that! I’m the lucky one because I was not born in the 40s like my Mother. Times have changed.
The whiskers and mustache –I have laser hair removal.
The polyester pant suit is high performance patagona.
The reason I never married is the beautiful Jewish princess on my arm.
I will never have a baby and it's ok – not sad – just different.
Life has many choices and paths we can take and if we spent it wondering what the other path would have been like, we will miss the scenery of the path we are on.
So I better get off my ass and make my life full and myself FABULOUS!
I will make it my mission to be the best weird aunt that I can be.
The most respectful daughter
A caring understanding sister
A wonderful niece
A good listener
A best friend and
A loving partner.
I will fill my life with art and science and politics and sport and literature and travel and laughter and YES sadness and heartbreak and grief because without those things I will not have joy and love and comfort.
