Yesterday was Father's Day. The clerk at the bagel shop wished me a Happy Father's Day. The homeless guy selling Streetwise wished me a Happy Father's Day. Very nice of them. Trouble is that I'm not a father. Just didn't get around to it.
When Babs and I first met she used to have this t-shirt that had a picture on the front showing a man and a woman driving down the road in a convertible. Both the man and the woman had big grins on their faces and their hair was blowing in the breeze. The thought bubble above the woman's head said, "I can't believe I forgot to have children."
Turns out that t-shirt was somewhat prophetic. As mentioned above, just never got around to it. Oh there was a brief flirtation with parenthood once, but when the pregnancy thing didn't happen right away, it was soon forgotten. We took in a foreign exchange student for a year one time and a year with a teenager seemed to satisfy any latent longing we had for parenthood. With the foreign exchange student we were able to send her back to Europe after her year was done. Now we get e-mails, Christmas cards, and all of that other stuff that parents get from their real kids and we did it in one easy year.
In the meantime, Babs and I have traveled around the world and taken all of that money that would normally go to child rearing and put it into a comfortable existence that we probably would not have been able to afford otherwise. We have grown comfortable with our existence. It is others who are not comfortable with our existence.
When Babs tells other women that she has no children, the usual reply is "Oh. I'm sorry." Sorry? Why? Babs readily admits that she prefers it that way. Not every woman is cut out to be a nurturer. There are children aplenty in the world without contributing more when you don't really want to.
Often my students at school ask me, "Mr. Ray, do you have any children?" When I tell them no, they inevitably ask "Why not?" Puzzled expressions ensue. Puzzled explanations follow from myself. Not really sure why not, but it doesn't bother me. Not every human being is cut from the same mold. Not every life has to follow the same pattern.
And then when my gray haired self in the company of my lovely, not gray wife go wandering into a shop, when we wander down the street, when we go into a restaurant, or check into a hotel, or hop on a flight to somewhere everyone who sees us quietly assumes that a normal looking couple in middle age have children and possibly grandchildren and they smile little knowing smiles at us. And then we smile knowing little smiles back at them in return and quietly smile at each other, knowing how little these people really know. We smile at one another knowing how great 25 years together and the prospect of 25 more can be, without children, and yet so very very normal.
I'm all for telling people "the dingo ate our baby." Although unless you are a Seinfeld fan, this won't be funny. Many people seem to see lifestyle choices different from theirs as character flaws and feel free to flap their pieholes in your face. By the way, the picture of you and Babs is gorgeous -- she is some looker.
ReplyDeleteSorry to disabuse you of the notion that Babs and I are in the picture. It's just a representative picture I downloaded from the internet. Didn't feel like searching the files for one of the two of us. I believe we are even better looking though.
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of Seinfeld, you can sometimes hear the remarks, "They have no children. Not that there's anything wrong with that."
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