I’m going to be thirty-seven in two weeks. I always said that, if I wasn’t a mother by the time I was thirty-five, I would just go ahead and do it. But then you get to be thirty-five and you have a couple of nephews and you have some friends who are parents and you think, “My god, that would be really hard to do alone” and so you don’t.
I like being an aunt a lot. I wouldn’t mind if the Butcher had some kids nearby I could go hang out with.
I don’t know. It’s set up a lot of times like it’s childless women v. mothers, but I don’t feel against mothers at all. I don’t feel like I’ve missed my calling or anything. You get to be this age and you know something about yourself and I think I would have been a fine mom, but not great and I think sometimes, in some ways, looking at our family dynamic, I would not have been good at all.
I guess you hope the other parent can balance that shit out.
I feel ambivalent. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something I should have done or really wanted to do and couldn’t do.
But I do wonder what my life would have been like if it had gone that way.
When I look back at pictures of my mom, before she got married, and she was so vibrant and strange in a way that seemed to get muted by life. And I can’t help but wonder what her life had been like if it had gone this way.
It’s a crapshoot, really. Life. Shit happens or it doesn’t and you make the best of it.
I’m always glad to hear her voice. We talk a lot about gardening, which sounds boring, I know. But I think it brings to us both the same sense of wonder.
Anyway, this is a weird post.
I guess you go through your whole life trying to figure that shit out, though–what it means to be a daughter, a mother, and so on.
Tiny Cat Pants 