prev
archive
blog
next
A friend at work is thinking of getting married at the same place Calvin and I did. Looking up all the information for her got me to reading the wedding entry all over again. We're a little more than a month away from our second anniversary!
I'm grateful, as ever, for my family.
Over a hundred degrees every day this week. I live in Hell.
Nothing much at the moment.
I listened to NPR on the way in this morning, so no song is stuck in my head.
2003 - The power of the internet
2002 - A letter to Grammy
2001 - I'm so misunderstood
Storyteller
Bio
People
Links
Recipes
Books
May 17, 2004
I guess it's time to talk about this.
Last night I had a very vivid dream. Calvin and I were trying to get pregnant, and we were having a hard time. We went to see the doctor, who recommended artificial insemination. Medical stuff ensued, and then Calvin and I were sitting in the living room of my mother's house (boggle - I hate how dreams shift like that), where I lived until I was nine. We were laughing and excited, and he was teasing me about not being able to drink at our wedding the next day(?). I felt like I was lit up from inside, with little champagne bubbles in my veins.
I woke up when the alarm went off this morning, and all I wanted to do was go back to sleep and recapture that elated feeling.
It's strange that I had this dream now, when the subject of having children hasn't been on my mind that much. There have been times when it's been very much on my mind, but not lately. Which is why the dream caught me by surprise. I'm one of those people that dreams about the things that are happening in life, that I watched on TV, or that I've been thinking about. But yesterday all we did was laze about the house and watch TV and movies - "The Last Samurai", "Deadwood", and "The Sopranos" being among the most memorable. So, certainly nothing to generate (what I call) a "Baby Dream".
I think I've mentioned that Calvin and I have decided not to have any more children. I've been involved with Michael and Marie's lives since they were very young, and I never really felt like I was missing out on anything by not having a child of my own, biologically speaking. I mean, I wonder about what a child of mine and Calvin's would be like, and I wonder about what it would feel like to be pregnant. As far as rearing children is concerned, though, I feel like I'm experiencing that to its entirety.
But to say you're "never" going to do something - to make up your mind on something so profound as whether or not to ever have a baby, and decide against it - well, that's a tough conclusion to draw. I have a bunch of feelings - conflicting ones - swirling around in my head, which is why I haven't written much on this subject before. It's like unravelling a tapestry - pull on one thread, and a bunch more appear that are connected to it, until all of a sudden you have this big unwound mess on your hands and you have no idea where to begin. One feeling is connected to another, to another, to another, and it's all mixed up with this deep shit that, even now, I feel like ignoring because it's too big and complicated to sort out.
My feelings about this subject are a chore to write about, and to explain. But I'm making myself do it.
It's a well known fact by now that I don't have very close ties to my own family. My mother died when I was young, and my sister is ten years older than me and following a radically different life path than my own. My father never existed as part of my life. I lived a rather sheltered life with my grandmother, and we were very close, but she passed away a few years back. And with her passing went a great deal of the connection that bound me to any kind of family. Really, for all intents and purposes, I consider myself to be somewhat of an orphan. The family that I have now - Calvin and his side of the family, Marie, Michael, Lilly and the baby(ies!) - are the fledgeling roots that I have set down for myself, that deepen every day. There are days, though, that I feel an intense loneliness at having no connection to my history, my heritage, my childhood. It's not in me to debate right now if my particular history and heritage is worth being bound to. I doubt it, but that's another discussion for another time, and a WHOLE other Pandora's Box of issues. I could be a basket case with very little effort at all.
It is quite often brought up, during conversations with the kids, Calvin, and his family members, the discussion of which trait a person gets from whom. Calvin's temper is his mother's. Marie's pragmatism is her father's. Michael's procrastination is his mother's. Both kids have Calvin's ears. Marie looks more like her dad (really, a LOT like Calvin's sister) than Michael does, but you can see profound evidence of both parents in them.
I joke around and say, "She gets that from me," when Marie brings home yet another stellar report card, or, "He gets that from me," when Michael comes back with a particularly good rejoinder when goofing around with his dad. Our friends have commented to me that Marie could be easily mistaken as my own biological daughter, so similar are our mannerisms, our taste in clothes, and our way of speaking. It's my influence, rather than my DNA, that the kids "get" from me. "Nurture", rather than "nature". It's highly rewarding, and hugely terrifying, to think that some of the ways the kids will treat their own children will come from how I, myself, have parented them. Some of their opinions and ways of going about doing things in life will be influenced by the example I'm presenting to them right now. Some of the traditions they meld into their own families will come from the ones that we started together. All of that is so thrillingly cool to me that I have to remind myself that they didn't physically come from me. To be sure, I stopped calling them "step" anything a long time ago. Marie is my daughter. Michael is my son. They just happen to call me "Laura" instead of "Mom".
As for myself, I have no idea where I get my physical and mental traits. Oh, some of them I can guess at. My sister and I both have the same skin type, so therefore we must get that from our mother, since my sister and I have different fathers. My uncle told me once, in a moment of drunken nostalgia, that I dance just like my mother. I know I get my temperament from my grandmother, since she used to comment on it often enough. That's about it, though. My family is absolutely infamous for non-communication and secret-keeping. My mother was hardly ever talked about after she passed away - I didn't even know what she died from until I had grown up and moved away. And I had no idea my sister and I had different fathers until I was thirteen. My father was certainly never discussed, other than being told to stay away from him if he ever showed his sorry ass around our home. I only learned a few new details about him just a couple of years ago, from my sister. There were family secrets that were revelations to me, that somehow I was kept oblivious to. Big things. HUGE things, and I only found out after my grandmother died and my sister realized just how in the dark about our family I was.
So. Maybe it's a good thing that I don't have close family ties. But it doesn't prevent me from wanting them. When I was young, I would gravitate toward the homes of my friends - they had moms and dads, and this whole alien "nuclear family" thing. It was completely beyond me, but I liked how they made me a part of their family while I was there. I missed having a mom who would show me how to put on make-up, and a dad who would get all protective when a boy showed interest in me. I missed things that I never got to experience, and as much as I pushed those feelings away and scoffed at them, they followed me through my adolescence.
And now here I sit, feeling lonely and parentless at (nearly!) thirty. Still. I wish I had a mom and dad. Still. Even though I figured I would outgrow it all, after I figured it all out on my own, and who needs parents anyway? Except that the wish changed from having parents to bring me up, to having parents to have an adult relationship with.
I'm envious of the relationship Michael and Marie have with Calvin, but without begrudging it. I just wish I had something like it. I've watched it grow and evolve from parenting to mentoring, authority figure to friend. I've often told Calvin that he has the relationship with the kids that I wish I had with my own father. And I used his example, instead of the one that my own parents would have (should have!) given me, when I developed my relationship with Michael and Marie. I guess it doesn't matter where the example comes from, as long as a good example exists and gets perpetuated.
So. All this stuff about roots and parents and loneliness and bonds are all tied up in my feelings about having a child. Without diminishing FOR ONE SECOND the relationship that I love and cherish and am eternally grateful for between me and Marie and Michael, I do sometimes wish for my own child. I want a baby made from the love that Calvin and I have for one another. It's a very relevant fact that my desire to have kids came upon me early on during my relationship with him. When I was married to X(m), I was very adamantly against having children. Looking back, I'm quite sure that it's because I didn't want to run the risk of his psychosis being genetic. That, and I'm convinced X(m) would make an awful father - I can't imagine being tied to him forever through a child.
After observing how wonderful Calvin is with his own children, I began to feel the first stirrings of wanting a baby. I want that permanent connection with Calvin. I want to feel it grow inside me, and flutter and move. I want Calvin to kiss my tummy and talk to the baby inside of it. I want to see myself reflected in someone else - their personality, their appearance. I want to learn more about myself from what I share with another being. I want someone's roots to begin with me. I want to give my baby the mother-child relationship that I always craved. I want to be called "Mom". I want a very first Christmas and a very first birthday, a very first step and a very first word. I do wish for that kind of motherhood, and sometimes it hurts.
I'm happy to have a different kind of motherhood, through Michael and Marie. My role as their step-mother and female role model has been very rewarding - they love me based on my own merits, not because they "have to". I do wish people would stop saying to me, "You'll never know until you have one of your own." As if the experiences I've had with Michael and Marie don't "count"! I know I have a lot closer relationship with them than many biological parents have with their children - and I know I could not feel any closer to them or care about them more even if they were my own.
On the flip side of the "to have or to have not" debate, often times I'm glad, and so is Calvin. Glad that we don't have to start all over, glad that Michael and Marie are older, glad that we can go out and not worry about leaving a child with a babysitter. Glad that we can sleep through the night without interruption. Glad that Calvin and I can spend a lot of time concentrating on just us, without having to deal with diapers and babyproofing and fifty loads of laundry a day. Glad that, in the near future, we'll be able to run around nekkid in the house again without worrying about traumatizing teenage sensibilities. Glad that a lot of the unknowns about having children are resolved for us. Will they grow up to be good people? They did. Will our loving relationship survive the teenage years? So far so good. Will we get our hearts broken? Barring the unmentionable happening, nope. Will we make it? Yep, we did.
Plain and simply put, we're glad to be nearing the end of our full-out parenting responsibilities, and glad that we're moving into the realm of parents with grown children. We'll never be done "parenting" Michael and Marie, and we never want to be. We'll always worry about them and be deeply concerned about their well-being. But we're gladly looking forward to what our relationships will be with one another as adults. It's like we've raised our very own friends - they're just good people that we like hanging out with just as much as (if not more than) any of the friends we have. We couldn't ask for better kids or a more fulfilling relationship with them. And really, if we have another child, there's no guarantee that they'll turn out as cool, and there's no guarantee that they won't end up hating us (it's a very slim possibility, considering how friggin' cool we are, but still). There's no guarantees in life at all - we have what we feel is a happy success with Michael and Marie, we don't want to mess with the odds.
Calvin and I want to be able to play, in a way that we've never been able to experience in life yet. He, because he's been "Daddy" since he was twenty. Me, because I've had to be WAY too responsible and grown-up until this point. We want to take vacations, and party, and forget about being responsible for a while. We're tired. We've experienced one aspect of life, and now we want to experience others. If we had a child now, it would mean that Calvin would have spent his WHOLE LIFE raising children. It would mean having to remain stable in our jobs and never take risks that may prove to be rewarding. It would mean having to continue to put someone else first, rather than each other and ourselves. Yes, it is selfish. But we've been selfless - and gladly so - for so long, that we think a little selfishness is due. That doesn't make us bad people. It's just time to move on with the next stage of our life - having a baby now would feel like we're going backwards, in some ways.
Of course, it goes without being said that if I were to find myself with an unplanned pregnancy, we would gladly accept the new baby as something that was "meant to be," and love and cherish and spoil it to the limits of our ability.
There. That's as clear as I can make it. "My biological clock is tickin' like this," yet I like the direction in which our life is progressing. If I don't have a baby, I'll always regret it. If we do have a baby, there will be parts of life that we'll forever miss out on. I feel wonderfully fulfilled with the relationship I have with "my kids", Michael and Marie. But there are parts of motherhood that I didn't, and don't, get to experience with them. I have a fantastic relationship with Calvin now, and all evidence points to an even brighter future. But how much closer could we be if we had a child together? And how horrible would I feel, if anything ever happened to Calvin, and I didn't have this physical bond with him to sustain me? Either direction that I take, there's something that I have to learn to live with. Neither choice is perfectly positive.
Of course. Such is life. And at this point, we've decided not to have any more children. Just because the decision is made, though, doesn't mean I have to give up thinking about it, wondering about it. Just because it's a decision I made, without pressure or influence, but with Calvin's kindness and understanding, doesn't mean I'm not allowed to be sad about it. This was a hard thing to wrap my mind around, as tied up as it is with other deep feelings and issues that I've discovered within myself throughout this process. But I have my family, my real and very own family, supportive and loving and right here beside me, reminding me of just how fulfilled I really am.
There's another entry up for today, too.
Comments on this entry? Head on over to Colloquial!