How Long...

In the comments of my last post, Donna asked how long it took for me stop feeling like a childless mother. I really don't know and I don't know what it was that got me there. Except I was tired of being tired and sad. Tired of wanting. I saw the days passing by me, and I didn't want to look back and see them all spent wishing for what I didn't have.

If I had a baby girl, I would want her to grow up to be happy, and if she couldn't have the life that she desired or planned, I would want her to find happiness anyway. Why should we want any less for ourselves? (I think that we may all occasionally need to remind ourselves that happiness does not do disservice to our pain. Being happy doesn't mean that we didn't hurt enough, that the failure didn't matter. More important than doing justice to our pain and our failures is doing justice to our lives. Has infertility not taught us how precious life is? Not being able to produce a life when we try so hard is terrible, but squandering a life that is already here it worse.)

Donna also posted about Aeon Flux, and how infertility is involved in the story. I haven't seen that movie, but I whenever I see a copy of The Handmaid's Tale, I think about what my life would be like if I lived in that book. I would not be a very good handmaid, I would probably be sent to work in the radiation fields or the brothels... It depressed me. The book is pretty depressing, to think that our culture could become so twisted, to think that ANY woman would be valued only for her ability to reproduce, and knowing that in the book, the one thing that seems to matter is among the things that I am unable to do makes me feel a little empty and without value. I don't like knowing that it is the one test (in the book) that matters and I am certain to fail it, that I would basically have no value.

BUT I do not live in that book, I live here, now, and in my culture, my marriage, my family, my life, this is not the one test that matters.

My Life Aquatic (as in everchanging, ebbing and flowing...)

Anyone seen The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou? There is a scene where the pregnant journalist says "I need to find a baby for this father". She's a little freaked out about being attacked by pirates, so it was a slip of the tongue, but it was a very interesting remark to me. (and I think to Bill Murray's character thought so as well. But it was a really weird movie, so I could be wrong.)

I think I used to feel this way about DH, and I have read other blogs and boards where similar emotions have been discussed. Things like "My DH was meant to be a father, I have to give this to him." Well, maybe so. Fortunately, for my own sanity, I no longer feel that I have a father on my hands in need of a baby, and I no longer feel that I am a mother in need of a baby.

Mother is such a huge title, one that so many girls aspire to, that I think often we see ourselves as mothers before we actually become mothers. We're Mothers in Waiting or something. And I know that the culture I grew up in, it was not unusual to carry that title in adult life as the main title, usually paired with "Wife and ...", but certainly between the 2, it was enough. And the wife part was much more disposable. I often thought that if I officially became a mother, I would shed my other titles: employee, artist, dog owner. They just wouldn't be necessary any more.

Being a mother without a child, being a captain without a boat... I don't have a child, but I am no longer a mother without, I just am me. I love this change because it means I am no longer defining myself by what is missing (children), or what prevents (infertility), or what I've lost (pregnancies). In fact, I am reluctant to define myself at all, because it is always evolving, we are all, hopefully, always evolving. I define myself as blessed, happy, a sum of all of my time, and that time continues to add to me, the ever-changing product.