His ex had wanted children. She had wanted children, so he had made an image of himself as a father. He’d rehearsed, throwing his nieces and nephews over his shoulder, offering to babysit, and saying all the right things to all the women before me about parenting, and equal responsibilities. He knew how to change a diaper.
I’d learned to change a diaper when I was twelve. It was my first job. Under the table, at my church. They’d pay me $10/hr to work the nursery during the seven and ten o’clock masses. It was mostly toddlers who were willing to play pretend. Who fell asleep as I read them board books. But a few haggard, trusting Catholics pushed their infants into my arms, redfaced and wailing, in need of a change. You learn quickly when it’s a necessity. You learn to wipe, powder, and turn off your nose. Block, if it's a boy.
I’d babysat for pocket change from then, till I was 22. Wrangling siblings and bratty only children. Ignoring the older siblings, who would do their homework at the kitchen table, declining rides home from the over-eager father. Eating family meals, with a family that was not my own, but that I was an essential for. I studied abroad, leaving a family uncared for a garish three weeks. I received several panic texts from the mother, begging to know the time I touched down.
Could she pick me up from the airport? Sally has a ballet recital today neither John nor I can get her to. She had a work meeting, John had to go to the gym. The father’s absence is always a nuisance. The mother’s absence is always for good reason.
He’d pick me up, in his car, which he only referred to as “the truck” (it was not a truck.) He’d paw at my thigh, his other hand spinning wild left turns. He’d blow vape smoke against the windshield, and wonder aloud why it looked so clouded. We’d have sex on his crumb-coated sheets. I’d perform, putting my theatre degree to some use.
Afterward, he’d say something along the original lines of “I want you to have my children someday…” He’d say this forlornly, as though he knew it couldn’t be. I’d play pretend, as I’d trained to do with the nursery toddlers, “I’d love to have your children.” We’d make up names, and write them foolheartedly in our notes apps.
Those children no longer exist, in either reality or in our shared fantasy. I’ve forgotten the names, and if I had to change a diaper today, I’d need a controlling mother to hover over my shoulder, reminding me how to place a Pamper.
I teach now, I gave up nannying three years ago. Opting to baby men more often than actual children. I babied a boss, I babied a boyfriend, I’ve babied best friends. My friends and I will sometimes look at each other lovingly, petting each other’s ponytails.
“Your hair has gotten so long.” And later in the conversation.
“I think you’d make a great mom, one day.”
“Thank you. You too.”
Less festering, less demanding. “I want you to have my children,” is an infected wound. A medical, medieval demand.
I have a friend with many siblings. She’s the youngest, and the oldest one amongst them is thirty-one years her senior. Her father had children in his twenties, and then again in his fifties. My parents had three children, and I was the last of them. My father got an operation after my birth to ensure there’d be no more. He’s remarried, and I’m relieved to not have an infant sibling crawling at my feet at Christmas. Neither of my brothers has had children, and they both swear against fatherhood. I speak to their partners about the environment and raising children in a climate crisis. I speak to my mother about grandchildren and promise to force her into free babysitting sometime in the future.
My partner and I share bank accounts and retirement plans. We have a warm apartment and unstable careers. We have a lot of love and lots of fantasies. There is a new notes app where I write increasingly harder-to-spell Gaelic names, and he thinks of girl’s names that fit with his monosyllabic surname. But when asked, we both agree we have no real interest in being parents. I feel no maternal instinct. Though, my mother was such a good parent to me, I often feel I should try to have children, so some of her wisdom might be imparted.
We went for coffee today, passing a Brooklyn public school, where schoolchildren screamed with glee, racing across the playground. We laughed along, squeezing each other’s hands tightly. There was a row of homes across the street from the school. What a sound to live with. We then got into a thoughtful debate regarding private versus public schools. I am a staunch believer in public schooling, though he raised the point that in the current political climate, public school students will be put at even more of a disadvantage than before.
I waved a hand at him, dismissing the thought. “But maybe we’ll have sorted it out by then. What in–ten years?” I can be very naive, and optimistic to a fault.
“Right,” he said. “Kids in our mid-thirties? Maybe we’ll have left by then.” I put in my ancestral Irish citizenship application the other day, alongside my brothers. We’re thinking of going back home. The Republic of Ireland is still on the Euro, gay marriage is legal, and abortion was made universally legal in 2021. We could raise a few Celts, have them learn the language my family lost in school.
Abortion is legal in Ireland. My mother defected from Catholicism just after my baptism, but the guilt is still there. I missed my period three months in a row around the holidays this year.
A symptom of an ovarian disorder I have. Skipped periods, hormonal acne, weight gain, hair loss, and infertility. I’ve had it for three years, and have been put on a slew of miracle drugs, and birth control. I take the pills when I wake up, with my first sip of coffee.
My mother petted my hair when I told her, teasing “Could you be pregnant?” I laughed and repeated a statistic to her about the likelihood of pregnancy for women with my disorder. Not likely.
What would I do if I were?
Go to Ireland.
The last one, before my current partner, and I once got in a fight. He punched a hole in the wall, I pushed him away from me. His ex had wanted children. I was unsure. I was still a child myself then.
“You know–” he’d started his hands on his hips, spit gathering on his bottom lip, “I don’t even think you’d be a good mother. You’re too absorbed with yourself.” I didn’t know then what I know now about my biology, so I agreed. I wouldn’t make a good mother. It would be better if I was born without the ability to do so.
If I could I would.
But I can’t. What else is there to say?
I’m my mother’s child.
I want you to be the mother of my children. They say.
They will always be my children.
And I might never be a mother.
Maybe I’ll go to Ireland.
Maybe the playground will be quiet.
