When my companions began entering their child-bearing periods, I was tending to my mother’s stained babies. Popular off her second, and greatest, morphine, she was laid up in a care home in philosophical recovery with her company fresh ostomy bag. Soon after her remains were spread at the beach she taught me to float, it was my father’s change to pour his sister’s bones.
I was raised by a single mother who loved me so deeply that it broke her, but I always wanted to hurt the way she did when I left for college or experience the anxiety she did whenever I hopped in the car with a child ( perhaps if we were just going to the neighborhood Cheesecake Factory ). When she discovered cocaine, I understood that same crippling anxiety. After spending her entire life as a hairstylist, Oxy finally gave up cutting her backache. On the days she made her way to the bottom of the bottle, and didn’t respond to my calls, I could only imagine the worst case scenario. Before long, I didn’t have to just imagine it.
My husband didn’t get to know the full extent of my biggest champion. Although she appeared during our best moments over the course of our 15 years together ( before she passed ), during the worst times, I wasn’t exactly in the right mind to think about having a baby, let alone having one. Additionally, we were renting a studio apartment while I was supporting her and paying off my news college loan. There was still plenty to donate to the liquor bank, but not enough to raise money for people. In the little compartments I hid my deep-seated Catholic sadness, I had the idea of creating a heir to our Murphy bed. Plus, as a hobbyist whose never finished a craft, I couldn’t fathom taking on the ultimate DIY project–one that I couldn’t leave collecting dust with my cross stitch kits.
But once in a while, when my father would sit into a keeper’s low during a shove with our daughter, or I’d catch him teaching her about the stars, the thought of what a great father he’d been did bubble up like acid reflux. With cognac and visits to Fire Island with a group of female friends who weren’t born with natural watches, I made up for the time lost to injury with the ideas I pushed along during our rumspringa.
However, I was having a full-blown anger on the day of my 39th day, or what my OBGYN has often warmly referred to as “my last great time” on a dirty New York City road outside of a Gray’s Papaya. I wailed to my husband ( and several onlookers ), that it was time we stopped procreation-ating. For those who didn’t watch Doug in the 1990s, we had to decide whether we wanted to be content with living selfishly ever after as DINKs or whether we wanted to consider starting a family someday.