It’s been a long road to own my childless by choice state, fraught with feelings of shame, embarrassment and mostly awkwardness. I just wanted to say something out loud like my friend did when we were both confronted with, “What is with you girls in your forties not having kids?” My friend gallantly replied: “I went through three failed IVFs, my marriage broke down, and then we got divorced.” The weight of the ensuing silence was priceless. But that wasn’t my truth, although the temptation to borrow her story was enticing.
Hub and I have been together for a while. Being married for 16 years and childless is weird. Let’s be honest. It just is. Like many couples that have made this choice, there were reasons far weightier than our penchant for nice dinners and travel.
I now just use my age, “Don’t be ridiculous, at 47, I’d have to use a donor egg!” Which ALWAYS incurs the response, “My cousin’s neighbour had a baby at 49.” Or something along those lines. But until I hit borderline menopause, I never really had my explanation nailed; had my delivery on point. If only life was in reverse, and I could simply say when responding to my all-time favourite question: “Who’s going to look after you when you’re old?”
“I pray to God, not the kids you home-schooled in 2020.”
If 2020 was anything (and really it was everything), it highlighted the vast differences between the haves and have-nots. And it was the first time I really owned with unabashed joy and gratitude, being a have-not. Have-not had kids.
My sister is not a big drinker. “I’m drinking alcohol every day”, she confesses to my sympathetic ear. Coincidentally, I am also having a wine. Not because I have a husband working from home and two children to home school in a small house in the Blue Mountains, but because it’s… Tuesday after lunch (perhaps). Like many thousands of parents, my sister is wondering when March and April will be over, and whether she will be able to see the end of 2020 without charges of grievous bodily harm (the husband) and an alcohol problem.
She, possibly like every parent out there, enjoyed the carting of the children to school 5 days a week, where she had the time to clean the house, work, and basically not be annoyed by her own children ALL DAY LONG.
“It’s awful. There is just no downtime,” my sister says, her voice faint with exhaustion. ‘” I’ll be on the toilet and Ruby will ask me how to spell a word…”
It’s come to light that my adorable 9-year-old niece Ruby is a slow learner, can’t spell to save herself and flies off the handle when she doesn’t understand something. Which is all the time.
“Ruby has about 30 tantrums a day.” During one of these meltdowns, my brother-in-law went M.I.A. He had been delegated to educate Zeke (the mouthy 12-year-old nephew who rolls his eyes and corrects my sister mid-lesson) yet had notably disappeared from his post. He was later discovered hiding in the marital room, headset on, watching a movie on his phone. You got to do what you got to do, I say. My sister, however, wasn’t as sympathetic.
At the time of this conversation, my brother-in-law had given Zeke a Lego re-construction project to get him off his screen. This resulted in the unpacking of two sets of Lego all over the cramped dining room table.
Ruby was in her 3rd change of outfit of the day (it was ‘white’ day but she had gotten grass stains on her previous ensemble possibly due to climbing a tree). They had eaten them out of house and home, which had resulted in a diagnosis of worms. The place soon had to be stripped, washed and vacuumed within an inch of its life.
“Terrible!” I said gulping down my wine (I couldn’t get it down fast enough with such palpable stress. Awful). “I wish I could help… I’ll have them next school holidays.”
I put the phone down, seeing the two fur children at my feet, staring at me with their gorgeous big brown eyes.
Walkies in the park, then home for an afternoon nap could be just the ticket for today.