That Question, or 'How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb'

Ok.  In the interest of full disclosure I feel I should mention that I wrote something yesterday, and I was highly emotional, but it came from my heart and gut and it was HONEST, but honesty is always skewed by perception, by mood, by perspective.

I got asked the question. Again.  The baby question.  Not the worst one, which has GOT to be:"When are you due?" when one is not pregnant, just a rounder girl, jesus that one sucks.  Don't ask that folks--especiallymen--if you aren't onehundred percent SURE that lady is having a baby.  Don't ask that.  Really.  I don't!  Because you skinny ladies may never have been asked it?  but Christ on a cracker that question blows syphilitic dick.

But no, I wasn't asked that body-image-raping question, but rather the judge-your-life-choices-and-draw-attention-to-your-most-personal-matters question.  The one that rapes your psyche and soul instead!  

And I wrote this journal entry a few hours after getting that question sprung on me.  I have gone back and forth with whether or not to share it because I KNOW I was in a dark place about it and wonder if any good can come out of it? 

But, then, we all struggle with the two dogs on our shoulders, right Kim?  

I try not to feed this dog, the negative-energy cur of a beast, but I don't think it will do any of us any good to pretend that he's not there.  Maybe we should hold the light up to that side of us, take from that side whatever truth and wisdom we can glean, and then proceed to nurture and strengthen the other dog, the positive-energy pal who is tail-waggy and cuddly and ready to pull little boys out of wells when duty calls.

But I'mma post what I journaled yesterday because I think it may be something that other women need to see.  or maybe I just need to exorcise it, and the best way for me to do that is to either post it or delete it.  

And I promised I wouldn't delete.

So here goes.  Let me say for the record that I find mothers and motherhood to be beautiful and powerful and awe-inspiring and both elemental and divine.  Ok.  Deep breath.

***

Ok.  SO I hate the question.  HATE it.  I hate getting asked the question and think, in this day and age that it’s high time HIGH TIME people ceased asking it.

Because it is very personal and so very often it is FRUAGHT with deep, conflicting, sometimes painful emotion, and it’s a COMPLICATED QUESTION. 

It’s one thing to discuss the matter with very close friends or with your sisters, maybe, even, your mother—If you have a close relationship with her and not a needling one—But acquaintances?  Friends’ mothers?  In-laws? 

And the thing is, about the question, the thing is I have such a knee-jerk reaction to being asked, that I usually come off quite bitchy when it’s posed to me.  I’m long past the playful demurring, over the “oh, I don’t know, we’ll see…”  In the sing-song voice and the wink of an eye.

Because I am a woman.  Not a girl.  And the question is very real, strikes right in the viscera, you know?  Right in the gut and twists in the heart and does quite a fucking number on the old psyche too.

But we don’t live in ancient times.  And it is none of anyone’s business what goes on in my womb now or in the future, unless I decide to share such goings-on.  Volunteer the information, if you will.  But until I, or any other childless female, choose to broach the subject, choose to give voice to the topic, please, please, please, for heaven’s sake, please DO NOT TAKE IT UPON YOURSELF TO ASK.

Because, for all you know, the woman may be struggling with the issue and in her own private hell about it.  For Christ’s sake.  Sometimes I get asked it by people who’ve known me and my husband forever, which means they know we’ve been together for close to 14 years, married for almost 4—so… this isn’t a newlywed type of fun flirty question, this is serious shit.  4 years into a marriage and no offspring?  Christ.  For all you know we may not BE ABLE to have children, had that thought crossed your mind?  It might be a terrible, awful subject for us and you just bandy it about like you’re shooting the breeze?

And though people don’t mean it, I know they don’t intentionally cross that line, I know it’s a thing our culture DOES, but even still—---being asked that question and having to continually answer it as small talk when the issue is so much deeper than chit-chat, well folks, that grates.  It irritates and frustrates.  And, like poison Ivy, I think, it has a cumulative effect.

Where once I was young and immune to the careless, unabashedly prying nature of the question, now I find myself acutely aware of it and have become increasingly sensitive.

Again, I stress, this is not the same as when FRIENDS or LOVED ONES ask.  Because I love them and want to share my life with them.  It’s those people on the outskirts of your social circle that really needle in the ribs.

AND ALL THE IMPLIED GUILT AND FAILURE INHERENT IN A NEGATIVE RESPONSE!  Good LORD!  I was asked it today, on one of the happiest days I’ve had—over the moon happy to be meeting my new ‘niece’, and I was asked it in such a way that made me look like a complete cunt in how I answered.  And I’ll tell you—it has soured my whole fucking day.

The implied ‘why not?’ hung in the air unsaid and then suddenly it was as if I was passing judgement on those who do choose to have children and ugh. 

And I know I’m not the only woman who struggles with this.  Who feels the seeming baby boom around us and has to remind herself that she isn’t at fault or somehow lacking for not expecting a bundle of joy anytime soon.  Not the only woman who feels the relentless tide of biology warring with hopes and finances and realities and relationships and has to repeat over and over to herself that ‘if it’s meant to happen it will happen’.

And All I’m asking is for those people on the outskirts to just take a minute, think about what you’re about to drop into the room, think better of it and say something less loaded instead. 

Because there ain’t no good way to answer that, no satisfactory way to respond unless maybe it’s to say:  “Actually I have an announcement to make...”  Ta-da.

Because the implication that my life is less complete than another woman’s is hurtful.  There, I said it.  It hurts a lot.  And maybe it hurts the most because we women are made to believe it so completely.  And to feel something of a loss everytime we bleed.  I’ve felt it.  Even when shaking with relief to see the menstrual blood--because being pregnant at that time would be a disaster--I have felt the twinge of regret and grief and failure.  Is it societal?  Deeply entrenched social pressures?  Or is it biological?

And is it biological for people to ask that fucking question?

Because as a child I was often very curious about people’s potential for fertility.  I had these older cousins who got married married and I would ask my Mum when she thought they & their husbands would have babies.  But do you know what my mother told me?  Amen for Betty Reardon.  AMEN.  Because she taught me that it was a private matter, that it was nobody’s business but theirs, and she gently made me understand that it was not appropriate to bring the subject up without invitation because it was complicated and personal and no frivolous thing.

Some of you know my mother and some of you don’t.  Many people might not expect such deep wisdom from her, such kind, perceptive sensitivity.  But there it was.  And an empathy too.

So thank you Mum, for never being one to ask the question, and for being one person in my life who never even once makes it seem as if the possibility of my not having any children at all would be a shame and a waste and a failure of nature.

“There are a lot worse things in life” she told me not too long ago.  And even though I was in a mood to brush that comment off, now I understand how perfect she really can be.

For the record:  I have wanted to be a mother since I met and fell in love with Aaron.  I have wanted to have his children since probably six months into our relationship.  I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting that, to see his children on this earth, but I am trying very hard to accept the fact that such a path may not be ours.  And maybe we won’t have biological children, and be ok with that.  Because maybe we’ll choose to adopt, and be parents that way.  Or maybe we will choose to spend our love and wisdom and parenting compulsions, like so many teachers do, on our students, and try to become the best Aunt and Uncle around too.  And lead a very full, rich, and loving life despite a state of childlessness.

So forgive the knee-jerk, cunty reaction.  But those words mean a lot more to me than they ever could to you as they spill out of your mouth, outskirts personality who says whatever they fucking want without regard.  And I’m not going to dignify it with an answer anymore.