Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

One Understanding Person

How many times, when someone’s asked how you’re doing, have you said, “Oh, fine,” when inside, you know you’re really not? Plenty, I’m guessing.

We’re culturally pre-programmed to respond this way, because the truth is, when people say, “Hey, how are you doing?” what they mean is something like, “Hey, I see you, I’m acknowledging your existence and letting you know that I want you to think that I’m a friendly person, but don’t get too close, and definitely don’t answer my question honestly, because I really don’t want to know, unless everything’s rosy in your world.”

Cynical? Perhaps? But imagine answering that question honestly and picture the look you’d expect to see on most people’s faces.

Which is why we protect ourselves by telling everyone we’re fine.

Recently, Wendy added a comment to a post I wrote, and shared something she had once posted on her Facebook page. She wrote:

“Sometimes when I say, “I’m okay,” I want someone to look me in the eyes, hug me tight and say, ‘I know you’re not.’”

Wendy said she got a lot of hugs after that post.

It’s incredible what a difference one understanding person can make. I’ve met several surprise ones over the years—a friend of my mother’s who caught me off guard with an understanding word; a stranger at a cocktail reception, who told me she and her husband didn’t have children either, and who became my BFF for the evening.

So, today I’m sending out a thank you to all the understanding people out there to let them know how much their simple word or hug made a difference to me.

Who’s been your surprise understanding person?

Whiny Wednesday: Skunks

We have a skunk family living under the house behind us. It’s so fun to watch them scrabbling around in the garden with their little tails stuck in the air, all attitude. I’m not foolish enough to get close, but from a distant, they’re terribly cute…

…until they dug up my vegetable garden.

I came out the other day to find my pepper plants all felled, my tomatoes tunneled under, and skunk-sized holes among my Swiss chard. There was dirt and seedlings flung far and wide.

 

Trying to maintain a good attitude, I am grateful that I even have a garden in my urban environment, and that there are critters that get to share this space. But, as it’s Whiny Wednesday, I’m dropping the Pollyanna act for today. Grrr.

What are you muttering about between gritted teeth today?

It Got Me Thinking…About Those People

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Last night I attended a production of Beauty and the Beast at an elementary school. First of all, I was knocked out by the stage presence, talents, and enthusiam of the young performers (mostly nine and ten-year-olds, I think). Second, it was a hoot being part of the audience. I was there as a supportive aunt, alongside parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, and friends of all ages. We cheered every entrance, laughed and applauded mid-scene, gave the cast a thunderous standing ovation, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It was riotous, rambunctious, and so much fun.

Considering the context, I found it interesting that the couple seated in front of us shot daggers at our row whenever my young nephew piped up. “That was HILARIOUS!” he’d say, in response to a character’s funny line or expression. “Did you see the salt and pepper?” he asked, during the big “Be Our Guest” musical number. It seemed each time he had something to say, Those People turned abruptly in their seats and shot us The Look.

Come on, people! We were surrounded by cranky babies, chatting adults, and distracted children (tantrum in the side aisle, anyone). It was noisy, it was chaotic, it was fun! This wasn’t a Shakespeare tragedy performed by revered actors. This was kids, doing the unexpected things kids do, surrounded by an audience of kids (young and old) who behaved…well…appropriately.

Shushing my nephew and occasionally covering his mouth didn’t diminish the noise around us, and also didn’t put an end to The Looks. I caught myself thinking, I wonder if they’re childfree? Certainly I’ve been at the receiving end of kicks to the back of my seat and been annoyed beyond reason when a screaming baby drowns out the pivotal speech of an Oscar-worthy performance. (Take the kid outside! Get a sitter!) I’ve given The Look, too. But not here, not now. I don’t want to be one of Those People, who give people-who-happen-to-be-childfree a bad rap, who perpetuate the stereotype that “childfree” is the equivalent of “child-hater.”

I feel sorry for them. Those People missed the point of the evening. While they grimaced and frowned, the rest of us created wonderful memories by getting swept up into the total chaos of a kids’ show, with all the goofs, good humor, and, yes, noisiness that comes with it. I wouldn’t have wanted any less.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s at work on a memoir about her journey to being childfree.

Graduation Season

It’s graduation season and Facebook and the local newspapers are festooned with pictures of graduating high school and college kids. I have a niece graduating from university and a nephew aiming to get the grades to go the university of his choice in the fall. It’s an exciting time and it always makes me wistful.

I’m over my longing for a baby and over my desire to be pregnant. I got over the desire for a screaming toddler first of all, and am largely at peace with the idea of not having the chance to raise children. But my recovery always seems to fall apart when it gets to the teenagers.

You’d think I’d have to be crazy to long for teenagers, and no, I’m not exactly pining for a pouting, door-slamming, know-it-all emo. But in general, I like young adults. I love to get into a conversation (difficult as it might be sometimes) with someone old enough to have opinions, but not yet old enough to be cynical. I love to hear about their ideas and dreams and plans for themselves. And I would have loved to have a kid of my own to be proud of.

I no longer ache for the cherub-like cheeks of a new baby or the warmth of a child in my lap. But I do get a little melancholy knowing I’ll never enjoy the pleasure of knowing I did a good job raising a decent human being to send out into the world.

This feeling will pass and my teen longing will join the ranks of the other stages of childhood I’ll miss and have mourned. But for now, I suppose I’ll just keep imposing myself on my nieces and nephews and living vicariously through my very proud mom friends who are celebrating their children’s rites of passage this summer.

It Got Me Thinking…About What Makes Me Crazy

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

You think you’re finally okay with being childfree, then your best childfree girlfriend announces she’s EXPECTING! and you find yourself sobbing hysterically over a carton of Haagen Daz. You turn on the six o’clock news thinking you’re going to hear actual news, but instead you get bombarded with baby bump status reports and profiles of unnaturally gorgeous celebrities who reveal secrets for losing all their pregnancy weight in just 4 weeks. You attend an important conference, all excited to focus on building your business, and get stuck in the middle of a passionate discussion about the struggles of working moms.

Is it just me, or is the Universe trying to make me crazy? I thought I was just being oversensitive, but then I got a new cell phone. In order to set up the apps, I needed to read the manual, which was only available online. In order to get online, I needed to register my phone. In order to register my phone, I needed to get the serial number from under the battery, inside the back panel. To open the back panel, I needed to refer to the manual. (Warranty be damned, I finally pried the thing open with a screwdriver.)

Once I got the manual, here’s what it said about organizing my apps: “Icons that have the * symbol cannot be removed. Only icons with the * symbol can be removed.”

I give up. Clearly the world has gone mad and is taking me down with it.

Pass the ice cream, please.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s mostly at peace with her decision to be childfree.

With Eyes of Faith…Charity and Social Justice

By Dorothy Williams


 

“But when you give alms,

do not let your left hand know what your right is doing,

so that your almsgiving may be secret.

And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

 

~ Jesus

Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6, verses 3 & 4

 

The virtue of charity is about more than writing a check to a dachshund rescue group.  As I wished friends at church a “Happy Mother’s Day” this year, I realized that this too was a form of charity and a gift worth giving.  Because I gave from my poverty — my lack of children — the gift felt more sacrificial than inking over alms in the form of cash, so that’s why I almost overlooked it as a practice of virtue.

 

Why are these gifts so hard to give?  Maybe it’s because we look for immediate reward from people rather than God; maybe it’s because we get tied up in knots trying to achieve social justice.  A Chinese proverb says: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Charity is the initial gift of fish, while social justice changes the man’s behavior, to cure the problem requiring charity in the first place.  When I first grappled with the fact that I was childless, all I wanted was social justice.  If I could just change society’s perception of my status, I would not have to be so understanding, so charitable, in the face of such monumental ignorance and insensitivity.  But in a child-centric culture, I was in over my head. Opportunities for social justice seemed to be around every corner and it frustrated me as I tried to correct problems that sometimes didn’t even exist!  I eventually learned that charity is something I could give until I had the opportunity to cure the problem at its root.

 

Nowadays, when I enter a troubling situation where I do not have the capacity or motivation to teach, I give an inward glance to the Lord, secretly communicating my need for grace in dealing with the person who has just crossed a mental boundary. Sometimes my gift of charity is humor, like when I brush off an insensitive comment with a joke.  Sometimes the gift is sacrificial, like when I wish someone a “Happy Mother’s Day”.  Finding balance between charitable and teachable moments is worth the struggle we go through to find it. The reward that comes from God alone is priceless.

 

Dorothy Williams lives near Chicago.  Her favorite pet rescue group is Midwest Dachshund Rescue. You can find them at:   www.mwdr.org.

Editor’s Note: This will be Dorothy’s last “With Eyes of Faith…” column. Please join me in thanking her for sharing her words these past months and wishing her well on her new writing ventures. Thanks Dorothy.

 

Whiny Wednesday

It’s Whiny Wednesday, your chance to really say what’s ticking you off.

This week, my whine is that I could really use a good whine about a couple of things that are rubbing me the wrong way this week, but because I don’t blog under a nickname, I can’t, in case the whinees recognize themselves. So, “harumph!” is all I have to say this week.

You, on the other hand, are free to whine to your hearts’ content. So, please, have a whine for me, too, will you?

Rekindling Old Passions and Finding New

I have a new passion: bird spotting.

Okay, so it’s not exactly new, nor is it the kind of passion that has me twitching in a hide in the middle of a field every weekend, so let’s call it a rekindled interest instead.

When I was young, I knew the names of hundreds of birds. Since then, I’ve moved to another continent with new birds and I’ve forgotten so much of what I once knew.  But on a recent trip to the coast, after squinting at a flock of birds nesting on a cliff face and having no clue what they were, I invested in a pair of binoculars and a copy of Sibley’s Field Guide to Birds of Western North America.

In all honesty, I stink at bird identification, and I’m stumped by more birds that I identify, but I’ve added several species to my scorecard, from the tiny Oak Titmouse that visits the “Bird Café” outside my office window, to the magnificent Bald Eagle that circled above me in the San Juan Islands. I even managed to identify a Western Screech-Owl after an in-depth search for recordings of its call. But most of all, I’m having fun rekindling an old hobby and learning something new.

So here’s my challenge to you on this fabulous (pre-holiday weekend) Friday: What can you learn about next week? Maybe it’s an old passion you can rekindle or a new pleasure you’d like to investigate. Find something new to learn and report back on what you’ve learned, even if it’s just a bit of trivia on your topic.

For now, I’ll leave with a very poor quality iPhone photo of a pair of Common Mergansers (Mergus merganser) that I spotted on the creek in my neighborhood. Happy holiday weekend to those of you stateside, and have fun learning something new!

P.S. Thanks to Kathleen for her suggestion for this post and for her excitement over my very common Common Merganser.

I am Exactly Where I Want to Be

by Tofy

So I’m outside enjoying what is going to be the start of a stunningly beautiful spring morning. As I look all around me, at my home, the beautiful pond with the ducks quacking away, and my dog by my side…  it dawns on me – I AM EXACTLY WHERE I WANT TO BE.  I am experiencing a moment in life when all my successes and all my failures are coming together to afford me this wonderfully serene spring morning.  And I wonder – would I have experienced this moment had I chosen to have children? Could it be that my life is “right” without children?

In the past, I used to wonder; what went wrong in my life, why me? Why did God decide I shouldn’t have children?  

As a rule I am a simple person. I have a very nonchalant laissez faire type personality.  I never truly longed for children, never fretted when at the peak of my fertility I chose to divorce a man I didn’t love, drive across the country to attend university to take up a new career in design. Then when most of my friends were popping out babies, I was popping out logos and print ads for design agencies.  Why?  Because at that specific moment in my life, I was right where I wanted to be.

I can’t say I entered my late thirties without a little angst about being childless.  I had finally found a man that I loved, that had the same outlook on life that I had. And for one short moment in life…we tried.  We tried to get pregnant that is.  But at forty-three, (yes, we started a little late) it was not to be.  There was no reason to look into why we weren’t getting pregnant; after all, I was premenopausal.  Looking back it was probably just because it was the right outcome for both of us.

I can’t recall exactly when it was that I chose to let go, but what I do recall is what it was that I said to myself that sealed the deal.  “What was it about being pregnant that I really wanted?”  And in that very question came the answer.  BEING PREGNANT.  I didn’t want the months of morning sickness, the sore backs and irritable moods.  I didn’t want to change a million diapers, watch my children grow out of all those designer kid clothes, or see them when they had their first heart broken by an unworthy girlfriend or boyfriend.  It wasn’t all that that I wanted, awful as that may sound.  What I wanted, at the ripe ol’ age of 44, was that moment you realize you are pregnant.  I’ve taken numerous pregnancy tests in my lifetime, just once I wanted that darn thing-a-ma-jig stick to have a plus sign!  I wanted it so badly that I even photographed the one single “ovulation stick” I ever peed on. It was so unreal to see a stick that I peed on have a big red plus sign.  It was the closest feeling I ever had to being pregnant.  But as I said, it was not to be. That’s when I realized having children was probably not for me.

So here I sit, writing this article, the ducks are still quacking in the pond and yes, my dog is still lying by my side.  Life is pretty good today. And yes, I can honestly say – I AM EXACTLY WHERE I WANT TO BE.

Tofy is a Freelance Graphic Designer. You can read more about Tofy where she writes about her passion for dogs and design.

Whiny Wednesday: Haters Gonna Hate

According to Urban Dictionary, “Haters gonna hate” is:

“A phrase used to acknowledge individual superiority in the face of negative external accusations. Can be repeated twice for emphasis. Often accompanied by a strutting walk away from offending party.”

I’m adopting this attitude towards the rare negative commenters who find their way to this blog. I’m not talking about those who offer an alternative point-of-view or simply disagree with an idea I post; I’m referring to the random people who drop by once, pick and fight, and then never come back again.

In the interest of creating a positive and supportive community here, I’m now practicing my “haters gonna hate” strut and the judicial use of the “Unapprove” button. I may even adopt this attitude in the real world.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What do you wish came with a “Delete” button?