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| Saturday, December 08, 2007 |
| Ace of Cards |
So. Ata has en evening alone at home, and feeling down and cranky. Under the circumstances, a perfect opportunity for some blogging.
The house lies in ruins about me. Alright, a touch exaggerated, but with one's entire life spread around on the carpet and laid out in the garage for strangers to paw through, one can surely be forgiven for feeling a little melancholic? We have three weeks to go, three more weeks before starting on the Next Big Adventure, and it can't come soon enough. Ata looks at herself and can't help but feel damaged, broken, stunted - only half of who she should have been, and her future seems cracked like old glass, brittle and crumbling as sandstone. The whole year is one of change - babies and new jobs, businesses begun and lives ended. Ten years in one city is long enough. Time to be gone.
What have I learned this year, what have I learned? I have learned it is hard to be childless when all around you seem to be glorying in their new children. Perhaps it would be easier if I had no choice in the matter, if I could say, "Well, I just cannot" - and then they would just look away in sympathy without prying further. Instead I say, "Well, you know, I have some Health Issues..." and if they are polite, no-one pries further at the edges of that weak excuse. I have learned that regardless of how close you are, new mothers are secretly (and not always entirely secretly) convinced that those without children are somehow deficient - selfish, perhaps, or otherwise lacking in love.
"You just don't know what love is until you have children," croons one who has had a particularly easy time of the transition to motherhood. And Ata pretends not to have overheard that comment - although it stings her to the soul to realise that taking time off work to be available to support that same friend in the chaotic days at home with a new baby does not count as love. Nor does rushing over at a moments notice to bring the cats in because the new mother does not want to put her baby down for long enough to corral recalcitrant cats. Or staying up until 3am because Ata's husband is out providing Ata's friend's husband with a listening ear when their relationship becomes difficult. It is painful to learn that, regardless of how badly you want to support your friends as they bring home new babies, none of your willingness to be on-call, to assist with laundry or shopping, to rearrange your social schedule to allow for the changes a baby makes, some will not count this as love because you hold no blood ties - no genetic bondf to take 'friendship' to 'love'. Others do not want to "impose", and so you lose touch because they do not feel they can ask you to meet at a different time, or in a different place, or put up with a crying child - and no insistence of yours will convince them otherwise. And you wonder if you are making the "right" choice - as if a baby is a ticket to a private club, and holding it out in front of you will make your friends suddenly decide they can trust you after all.
I have learned that it is difficult and heartbreaking to see your parents struggle with the mortality of their own parents. To sit beside a hospital bed and watch a once-strong adult fumble with their spoon of jelly is like seeing echoes of a future - what is now my father helping his father will one day be me helping my father - or my mother - or my husband - or perhaps my husband helping me. Echoes of a past, too, as I realise what other people saw in me when they came to visit, and probably what they will see again in a visiting-time to come. And so I counsel my mother - "All you can do is your best - you can make choices only for today, not for yesterday or tomorrow" - and wonder if, in a future waiting for me, a favoured niece or nephew will be saying the same about me to my brother or sister.
I have discovered a great reserve of patience and tolerance for the temperaments of others that I had thought I did not have. I have discovered that I trust too easily but ask too little of others for them to trust me. I have discovered the danger in trusting others, but not the hard way - yet (good thing I am moving!). I have discovered that I am more ambitious than I thought I was.
Today - in the midst of throwing out most of the contents of a Box of Assorted Stuff - I discovered a note penned by Mixed Hobblings and bearing a greeting from the Great Hobb herself. And I smiled a little, and smoothed it out, and tucked it in the front of Shaman's Crossing - discovering again the Kindness of Hobblings.
Also in the midst of packing, I discovered this year's Virgin Credit Card. It arrived in the post in July, and was promptly put away in a drawer (my Virgin Card is a 'reserve' card, so the expiry of the old one went unnoticed). The letter attached to the card is signed by whomever it is that is charged with the responsibility of authorising the issue of replacement Virgin Credit Cards, and underneath his name is his position title - "Ace of Cards".
Three weeks, three weeks to go. I cannot wait for something new. |
posted by Ata @ 7:05 pm  |
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| 4 Comments: |
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You aren't "childless," you are "child-free."
Folk who look down on someone for not having kids are just stupid. How can they presume to know the right decision that EVERYONE can make on something so huge?
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I'm sorry about your friends being... idiots. But they probably don't mean to be and are jealous or at least envious of a life that means you can travel to the other side of the globe... and meet with wonderful UK Hobblings who are very much looking forward to meeting you.
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You aren't "childless," you are "child-free."
I agree. I know that I would rather be free to fly around the world than devote the next twenty years of my life to someone that probably won't appreciate it. *grin*
And to those who say you don't know what love is if you don't have children? That's completely wrong. We have many kinds of love in our lives, and many ties that are bound with blood and not. Doesn't make them stronger. Just makes them different.
Anyway, if the child thing starts to get to you, go listen to Sex Changes by the Dresden Dolls. You know why.
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Well, if I'm being fair, not all of my new-mother friends are that bad. And I think that many will probably develop a more open mindset as time goes on - the life outlook of new mothers seems to be as different to experienced mothers as it is to non-mothers! My own mother shrugged and said, "Well, my sister and Dad's sister have no kids, and they've turned out to be good people who are involved in their communities and extended families and have happy satisfied lives." So there's hope for my friends yet!
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You aren't "childless," you are "child-free."
Folk who look down on someone for not having kids are just stupid. How can they presume to know the right decision that EVERYONE can make on something so huge?