Something Shiny!

I debated so much about writing this post. I’ve written it in my head so many times, only to delete it (from my brain? it’s unclear) because I’m basically a wimp. But here goes: The thing is, I’m not like most other women. I knew very early on that I didn’t want children. As a young girl, I was never interested in babysitting. Petsitting, yes. Babysitting, no. The sound of a baby crying made me, even at that age, want to run screaming in the other direction. When I was a teenager, I declared to my friends that once I was old enough, I was going to get a hysterectomy. That’s how certain I was about it. And you really can’t, as a woman, say that to people. Even today, it’s so socially unacceptable for a woman to not want children. You’re seen as a sort of freak. And so I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut about this particular thing. Partly because of that, but also partly because I know things change sometimes. When I started dating, I knew I didn’t want to get married. It wasn’t something that interested me. And then I met John. And nothing changed. I still didn’t want to get married. I didn’t see the point in the piece of paper. We dated for five years before we got married. I’m not sure I could point to what, exactly, changed my mind about marriage. But it took awhile. Maybe I’m a late bloomer. So here I am, at 32, still wanting a little more time to decide about the whole baby thing. And let me tell you, you don’t want to be married yet childless at 32 while going home to visit relatives over the holidays without at least being pregnant. The number of questions we fielded about marriage all those years ago pales in comparison to the number of questions and weird looks we’re getting about babies. Even in the classroom: on the first day of this semester, as I was learning my students’ names, one of them gave me a sidelong look and said, “no kids, huh?” As if it was branded on my forehead. I don’t know how to end this, really. I wish I had more time in which to make this decision, and yet the clock ticks on: biology waits for no man.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 3:57 pm and is filed under MeMeMeMeMe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.