Working out the kinks
You know the old saying that they say about relationships, you find one when you are not looking for it anymore. Does the same saying apply to children? Hard to think that way, but a neighbor stopped by with her child wrapped to her chest and said about the recent loss that maybe it wasn’t the right time, and maybe we need to quit focusing on it right now and instead to immerse ourselves in babyland as in walking over to the Cabrini playground and hanging out with the new moms and their babies on Saturday mornings.
I know she has something to tell me – but for me, strolling over the park to watch new mothers with their babies might be just a little bit much right now. I already did this enough when I was trying to get pregnant myself and kept losing every baby in the first trimester – I watched ALL of my friends get pregnant and join mom’s groups. You know, honestly, it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t zen, it just kind of sucked.
I had lunch with my friend who lost her two year old daughter last year to a brain tumor. It’s hard to be happy about anything, she said. Yeah, you’re right, I responded. But the good news is that we both get up in the morning and carry on. You just do what you got to do – as sucky as it may be.
I told her the big picture was eluding me – how all my exes have children – and all of them a) didn’t want children, and b) were pivotal in my not having any – it seems, uh, unfair. She said it was hard to believe that there are so many children in the world who are unwanted; it seems odd that we have so much to offer and keep arriving at dead ends. I told her just what I told my neighbor earlier and what I told T yesterday: yeah, but we’re this close.
It’s sordid and sick, you know, the whole business of wanting. A mother wanting her dead child when she has two beautiful ones in front of her. My wanting to adopt a baby when that involves someone giving up one.
Wanting carries a language all to itself.