Dawn and I have been friends for years. Cut from the same cloth, we share a love for fashion, art, nutrition and health. We have similar reproductive histories and bonded over that in late night conversations and long walks in the city. We love God and clapped alongside each other on countless Sundays. She moved to Florida a few years ago and I miss her quirky sense of humor. We reconnected on-line a year ago when we both started blogs. Hers is the opinion I look for when I doubt my words. She’s coached me through my most popular posts. I’m honored to host her during National Infertility Awareness Week ( #NIAW ). Today Dawn tells it. And I promise, you’re going to want to meet and hug her after reading. Show her some warrior love in the comments and get to know her better on her blog Tall Girl – Late Bloom
I love children and most kids that I know, love me. I love the way babies pull my hair and my earrings and pinch the mole on my face, how they laugh with their whole bodies. The way toddlers document their experiences with crayons and paper and try to do everything the adults around them do. They really do make my heart melt.
On the other hand I’m blessed because when I’m done playing with them I get to give them back to mommy and daddy and go home to a quiet house, go on vacation when I want, stay out late, whatever it may be, I only answer to myself.
I get to be the cool aunt, known for having the gift of extreme silliness. When one of my nephews was seven and was having a rough day, I took him in my lap and hugged and tickled him until he couldn’t help giggling. He said to me “Aunt Dawn you should have kids cause you sooo… nice and you know how to make kids feel better!!” I was struck by the sweetness of his words but I rationalized that I would rather not take the chance… It was too dangerous for me to be in charge of an actual human being.
No, other people had children; I am still trying to raise myself. I’m constantly asked, almost every day, why I don’t have children. I find that question very confusing, after all it’s not as if you can just create the perfect father out of thin air, outside of that who would I be having this baby with? Even if I wanted a baby… if there are no decent, single, father-material men anywhere in sight. I have no idea how to remedy that situation. I dated two guys one after the other, both of whom wanted me to have their babies, but neither of them wanted to call me their girlfriend, they both asked why I wanted to label the relationship. Needless to say neither one of these blossomed into anything serious.
When I did get married my husband also begged me to have a baby, good thing I never got pregnant, our marriage only lasted 2 years. I’m in my mid-forties and I’ve had serious issues with reproductive health and I haven’t yet been involved with a man who was actually father material.
But I have to admit, within the last few months I have felt like something is missing in my life. I try to look into the future and it seems very lonely, no husband or children… While I believe it’s possible I might meet someone great and get married again, I don’t see myself being able to give birth simply because of my age.
That thought doesn’t really upset me, what I do find disturbing is that due to the type of childhood that I had, I never saw myself as a mother. I wonder sometimes if that made me approach life in such a way that resulted in me not even considering having children.
I was five years old when I decided that not every person capable of giving birth should have children. My mother was days away from giving birth to my baby brother when her and my father started one of their fights, he quickly used his size against her, as usual, throwing her to the floor and kicking her in the belly over and over again, shouting that he had told her he didn’t want any more kids.
My sister and I tried to make him stop to no avail, we were too little. I recall the cold perspiration which made my clothes stick to me; I worried that the neighbors would be calling the cops any minute now and wondered if this time my father would actually get arrested and thought about how violent my mom could be to us kids after my dad beat her up. I knew this was no life for a kid, I was sick of being scared.
A few minutes later my father left, the loud slamming of the door made me jump. My mother slowly got up, brushed herself off and limped into the kitchen. For the rest of the day my mind asked itself “why him?” As in, of all the men in the world, why did she choose to marry and keep having babies for him? It puzzled me, taxed my brain.
I made a childish promise to myself… that would never be me. Never, ever, ever.
No marriage, no babies, I would be free as soon as I got old enough to leave home. When my dad got home later, into the awkward silence he put on one of his Bob Marley records and played “No Woman No Cry.” I found his coded apology predictable, disgusting and pathetic.
As I grew I would often think that my mother and my father should be ashamed for bringing children into the unstable environment their passions and deficiencies had created. As for my mom, she was more concerned with how we looked to the outside world, beautiful home, ribbons in our hair. This is why as I grew up I became more and more invisible, transparent, like a ghost, staying under the radar made it easier to exist in such a negative environment.
Whenever I tried to get something out of life I was shot down.
Like when I was 14 and my guidance counselor asked me to be in a Miss Teen pageant, I was so thrilled, I took the form home to my mother to sign, she read it over quickly and with a smirk said “I’m not signing this… you’re not even pretty Dawn, you’ll just get your feelings hurt…” The crisp white paper made a sound like a zipper as she folded it in half then handed it back to me. Again I thought that if there was the slightest chance I would ever treat a child of mine that way… I would rather not have any. After all, don’t people parent the way they were parented, wouldn’t the tendency for cruelty and violence be baked into my character despite my best efforts?
I felt that the small chance I had of ever being a good mother was far outweighed by my conditioning and I felt that no child, including me, deserved to be parented by someone who’s understanding of children was limited to the circumstance of their own awful childhood.
But time has marched on and changed like a river imperceptibly re-routing itself. It’s been a hard conclusion to reach… but as bad as things were, I guess my parents did the best they could, certainly better than their parents. Through the years have met many people who have been through far worse things and still turned out to be fantastic parents. Maybe if I had my own children I could have been better than mine were…
Ultimately I feel ready to face the fact that even though my circumstances are not perfect… that I can adopt one day and give a loving and safe home to a deserving child of which there are too many in this world. If I have the pleasure, I will promise to be all about the business of helping them chase and attain their dreams.
Anything is possible.
a post for Last Girl On The Hill : a blog series on fertility and faith
