Illustration by Hadley Hooper
|
Baby Blues
By Betty Rollin, July-August 2003
How I stopped mourning the child who never was
|
I am one of those old-time "career girls" who forgot to have children. Well, I didn't really forget. I was just busy. And ambitious. And because I was busy and ambitious (and okay, maybe a tad neurotic), I didn't marry until I was 36. It was the start of the '70s, and the women's movement was just taking hold. It certainly had taken hold of me. I even wrote an in-your-face piece (for Look magazine) dumping on motherhood. Who needs it, I actually said: "The notion that the maternal wish and the activity of mothering are instinctive or biologically predestined is baloney." I didn't stop there. "A lot of evidence suggests that for more women than anyone wants to admit, motherhood can be miserable," I wrote. To explain why any woman in her right mind would want to enter such a state, I went on to talk about all the societal pressures to be a mother, not to mention the instant identity conferred by motherhood: "First, through wifehood, you are somebody's wife; then you are somebody's mother."
I remember writing that piece. It was the summer of 1970, and I had my research sprawled all over the dining-room table in a big, old beach house I was sharing with Betty Friedan and a few other feminists and male sympathizers, one of whom was to become my first husband. I want to be fair to myself: The piece had some merit. I wrote about women who became mothers automatically, who perhaps shouldn't have; about the fact that there is a lot more to being a good mother than many women understood before they got pregnant. I talked about unhappy mothers who couldn't admit it. (Their rage was palpable in the mail I got.) And, I said, if you found motherhood didn't suit you, unlike marriage, you couldn't—and still can't—divorce your child. All good points. My problem was I took every word I wrote to heart. In those days, you lived what you wrote.
So no children for me. It wasn't a difficult choice. That first marriage lasted about five minutes, and even though I hooked up with a new boyfriend—who wanted children—I got breast cancer, and the oncologist said I'd better not. (Nowadays, that advice has changed. Lots of women who have had breast cancer go ahead and give birth with no ill effect.) The new boyfriend thought better of marrying a woman who couldn't have children—and my second husband, a mathematician, is the kind of tender-hearted person who is naturally sweet with children, but he told me he was happy not to own any. I think he realized that with children, noise and interruptions—two things he hated—would be part of the package. Anyway, by then we were both 42.
So fine. My career went roaring ahead. I went from magazine work to television. My books were made into TV movies. I was riding high. I adored my husband—still do. We had great friends. I got better at cooking, and we turned out some terrific dinner parties. All was well. I had a second bout with breast cancer, but when that passed I felt the way I did the first time: lucky.
In my late 40s, I noticed our friends' children were growing up into people. Some of them were really nice people, not to mention smart and attractive. Hmmm. I found this interesting, but in no way did this fact reach the internal me. By my 50s, the grandchildren began to appear. The photos looked alike to me, but I didn't say that. Then my mother died, and I was forced to notice that, except for my husband, I had no immediate family—no parents, no siblings, no children. I reconnected with a couple of cousins. I forged a new relationship with a nephew, my husband's brother's son who had moved to New York. I observed myself doing this, but in a detached way, with no emotion I was aware of.
Then I hit 60. We thought, let's go to China before it's too late. In China, like everyone, I took photos. But I found myself not taking the photos that everyone else was taking. My photos were of people, but not just any people; they were of mothers and children. Mostly I clicked when a certain look happened between the mother and the child. To this day, I have one of those framed on a bookshelf in my living room. A woman sits on a stone step on an ancient, remote road. Her child, a chubby one-and-a-half- or two-year-old in light blue overalls, stands sulkily on the step below. The mother is leaning back a bit, as if to get a full view of her little prince. The language of her look is clear: Look at him! Have you ever seen such an adorable boy?
I snapped, and something odd happened to me that had been happening throughout the trip. My eyes filled up. It wasn't that I was moved in that way one is moved at the sight of something apart from oneself. I was moved by the sight, yes, but the tears came from a stab I felt in my heart. I had no small creature of my own I could look at like that. I felt jealous. And jealousy turned rapidly into grief. My decision—even though it hadn't been totally my decision—had finally caught up with me. Right there in the remotest corner of western China, at the age of 60, when of course if there were such a child in my life, he would be a grandchild, I began to mourn for the children I never had. I didn't talk about it to my husband. What was the point? We were traveling, and surely this would pass.
But when we got home it didn't pass. I saw mothers and their children everywhere, all with that look. On the street, on the bus, in airports, in supermarkets. I learned to look away. When our friends talked about their children (which some of them did incessantly), instead of being interested or amused or whatever I used to be, I was pained. I thought about my own mother, how close we were, how much I missed her, how much I would have loved to pass on to a daughter or son what she gave to me.
What brought this on? I had to figure it out. If I figure it out, I thought, I'll stop moping. I was wrong. It took more than understanding. It took acceptance. Mainly, it took time. I had to step back. Obviously, a big part of it was about being 60. Sixty is when you pretty much know what has become of you and what hasn't. There are surprises, but after 60 the surprises are for sure not going to be babies, not your own.
My husband, no fool, pointed out something else to me: It's easy to be unhappy about a choice you've made when it's no longer a choice. The motherhood boat left years ago. Now I could drop (safely) to my knees at the shore and pound the sand in sorrow. We both knew that if the boat turned around to pick me up, I'd beg off. I found myself smiling at the thought. And then I took a good look at my husband, who—did I say this before?— is the world's greatest. It's embarrassing how happy we are, even after 25 years. A child would have changed things—maybe for the better, but I don't know that. I don't know what it would be like to have a child, period. I do know there is more to motherhood than That Look.
I found comfort in seeing children who were awful: a screaming kid on a plane, kids on drugs. I got to note with smug satisfaction that they weren't mine. But the fact was, most of the children I met were not screamers or drug addicts.
I continued to struggle with this non-motherhood thing. The struggle ended when I stopped struggling. That is, I stopped trying so hard not to be sad. I realized—and accepted—that I'd always be sad about it. And I began to look around me. Who isn't sad about something missed in life? Or about something terrible that has been endured? Pollyanna (for whom, I confess, I've always had a weakness) showed up. Hey, she said, aren't you forgetting? You had breast cancer twice, and you're still breathing.
Actually, it was after one of those yearly oncologist visits that I felt a turn. You know how you climb up on the examining table and you think that you're probably okay, but you've had that same thought before when you weren't okay? Then you find out that you are, in fact, okay and you fly home with new wings, and there's Miss Pollyanna again, perched on the sink, and she reminds you that aside from your good health, which you will never never take for granted, you're crazy about your husband and vice versa; you like your work. Why don't you focus on all of that and stop complaining?
So I did.
Betty Rollin, author of First, You Cry and Last Wish, is a contributing correspondent for NBC News and PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.
|
