how do you make the biggest decision of your life?
I finally string enough thoughts together for a new entry, and of course it's more than 1,000 words of personal meta.
When we were leaving Abu Dhabi in September, I finished work two weeks before Brandon did, and so it fell to me to sell our belongings. This was a maddening process in a country with no address system involving a lot of flyers, long phone calls directing people who spoke only marginal English down tiny, poorly paved, unnamed streets, and endless haggling.
In the process, a fascinating cross-section of Abu Dhabi society passed through our door: a divorced British schoolteacher starting over with her young son; the Indian couple upstairs living in a one-bedroom apartment with their two children; a well-to-do Arab man with his manservant in tow. Many people came with siblings, friends, and spouses; only one came with his two young children.
I don't recall seeing any men minding young children by themselves during my almost five years in the desert. Usually, it's a harried nanny trailing behind a glamorous-looking woman and her friend, or young families eating together in their special restaurant sections (every eatery bigger than a hole-in-the-wall shawarma stand has one.) But Zachariah came with his approximately three-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter.
He would end up buying the bulk of our small appliances (his brother worked at Carrefour, a hypermarket chain, and likely repackaged and sold the items as new, but mine was not to question.) He only brought his kids on that first visit, and thankfully
khaleesian was over to help with moral support and some light packing, so she took charge of keeping the boy entertained (read: not chasing after our cats) while I conducted business with Zachariah, daughter slung on his hip.
He was interested, and had money, but it was in his car. Would I mind watching his kids for a moment? With that, he pushed his infant daughter into my arms and walked out to get it.
This presumption of a woman's motherly instincts is apparently common enough in the Middle East: a friend mentioned seeing men and women shove children into the laps of women sitting on buses in Egypt. But my father's sister doesn't have children, and my mother was estranged from her family even before we emigrated to the U.S., so I'd held a baby exactly once before, when my then step-aunt had a child with her new husband. I was 12 years old, and had to insist they let me sit down before entrusting me with a newborn. Despite three years of dance, including ballet, I was (and remain) a hopeless klutz. The baby was thankfully asleep, and I managed not to do anything to wake him in the two minutes I could tolerate holding him before handing him back to my mother and excusing myself to wait in the hall. Too small, too fragile, too much of a reminder of everything that could go wrong in my life (his mother was 15 when she had her first child. And my own family was never a happy one, the less said about it the better.)
But in the intervening 18 years, I had managed not to get pregnant, married a man I love, started a fulfilling career and was in a (metaphysical, at least) place and age when women generally think about babies without terror in their hearts. Holding a small child again, however, made it clear that I was not in that place.
Nobody's pushing for anything, but the offhand comments from relatives have started (from B.'s side of the family, and I don't blame anyone on mine for wanting nothing but individual happiness after we failed so spectacularly at making each other happy.) B. and I have discussed it, in the abstract - sometime, in some other place, when we're both more secure in our careers and financially, etc. And given our situation right now, I couldn't be more grateful that we don't have the additional burden of a baby.
But it's more than the financial difficulty of it. I don't feel warm inside when a baby giggles - I brace myself for the unearthly shriek it can turn into. Crying children set my teeth on edge the same way they always have, and watching their frazzled/irate/sobbing parents try to appease them only makes it worse. I feel no biological urge to turn my body into an incubator for nine months, and a vending machine for another six months to a year after that in a physically and mentally sapping process that will alter me irrevocably to an extent that no one can predict until it's done. And not that my concerns would be diminished, but they're not about "keeping my figure."
At the same time, I would have a supportive partner, someone who wants to be the same good father to a child that his father was to him. He wouldn't mind adopting, and I think coming in after someone else has cleared the hurdle of pre-verbal tantrums and potty training would do me a world of good, but I feel the vanity he doesn't in thinking that the world would be a better place with more people like him in it.
As for myself? I don't feel incomplete. I've got a literal mountain of projects there aren't enough waking hours for (not to mention all the television I want to catch up on, video games I want to play, fanfiction I want to read, etc.) And more days than not, I go to bed wondering about what the hell I'm doing with my life, much less assuming that I could possibly know what's best for someone else. People seem to do it, but is having a child to give your own life meaning really the best idea? If not that, then what? Why do people have children? I can think of some terrible reasons - save a relationship, appease their family, create a legacy - but not a single good one.
This is not trying to bait anyone; I genuine have no idea what makes people want to take on the gigantic responsibility of raising a member of society. Or is it just that, making a little piece of the world in your image, the way you wish everyone would be? Because there are better ways to do that than rolling the genetic dice and then piling on all the pressure of getting the nurture part right, too, and hoping that some random event doesn't derail everything anyway.
My father, a championship-level chess player, emphasized rationality and logic in everything: methodical steps, considered five, 10, 20 moves head. Consider your position and where you want to go, and then make a plan to get there. But it's difficult to make a plan when I still have no idea what I want while society, medical science and popular culture all scream about what that should be, which isn't making things any easier (further not helped by the fact that their answers are entirely different).
In the end, I held Zachariah's baby for all of 15 seconds, as long as it took to get her to the sofa, where I managed to sit her down and stare at her as she blew spit bubbles, babbling about how sorry I was that I had no idea what to say or do with her. And just as she was losing interest in my desperate words and flailing hands, the angel
khaleesian scooped her up and had her giggling by the time Zachariah came back, approximately a year later.
Back in the present, B. and I are coming up on the end of a weeks-long Mad Men binge, which believe it or not has been somewhat helpful to my state of mind. Talk about a show with complex views on motherhood. I fear being cold like Betty, who sees her children as obstacles to the life she gave up to be with Don. I fear being conflicted like Joan, who loves her son but who is ruthlessly pragmatic when it comes to keeping work her top priority, and how does that serve her baby? In particular though, Megan's mother has been an interesting influence, cruel to her daughter not because she's envious, but because Megan cannot manage to be happy despite having everything her mother has ever wanted (those being money and a handsome husband). "Not every little girl gets what they want; the world couldn't support that many ballerinas," she says near the end of season five, which only serves to spur Megan on harder - the intention all along, presumably.
This show seems to insist that its women could be happy, or at least not make terrible mistakes, if they would just trust in themselves (an interesting contrast to its uncharitable views on the irredeemability of men in all aspects of life). So I guess it doesn't matter why other people choose to have children, just whether that's an experience I can handle. If I can figure out whether it fits into whatever I'm trying to do with my life.
One step at a time.
When we were leaving Abu Dhabi in September, I finished work two weeks before Brandon did, and so it fell to me to sell our belongings. This was a maddening process in a country with no address system involving a lot of flyers, long phone calls directing people who spoke only marginal English down tiny, poorly paved, unnamed streets, and endless haggling.
In the process, a fascinating cross-section of Abu Dhabi society passed through our door: a divorced British schoolteacher starting over with her young son; the Indian couple upstairs living in a one-bedroom apartment with their two children; a well-to-do Arab man with his manservant in tow. Many people came with siblings, friends, and spouses; only one came with his two young children.
I don't recall seeing any men minding young children by themselves during my almost five years in the desert. Usually, it's a harried nanny trailing behind a glamorous-looking woman and her friend, or young families eating together in their special restaurant sections (every eatery bigger than a hole-in-the-wall shawarma stand has one.) But Zachariah came with his approximately three-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter.
He would end up buying the bulk of our small appliances (his brother worked at Carrefour, a hypermarket chain, and likely repackaged and sold the items as new, but mine was not to question.) He only brought his kids on that first visit, and thankfully
khaleesian was over to help with moral support and some light packing, so she took charge of keeping the boy entertained (read: not chasing after our cats) while I conducted business with Zachariah, daughter slung on his hip.
He was interested, and had money, but it was in his car. Would I mind watching his kids for a moment? With that, he pushed his infant daughter into my arms and walked out to get it.
This presumption of a woman's motherly instincts is apparently common enough in the Middle East: a friend mentioned seeing men and women shove children into the laps of women sitting on buses in Egypt. But my father's sister doesn't have children, and my mother was estranged from her family even before we emigrated to the U.S., so I'd held a baby exactly once before, when my then step-aunt had a child with her new husband. I was 12 years old, and had to insist they let me sit down before entrusting me with a newborn. Despite three years of dance, including ballet, I was (and remain) a hopeless klutz. The baby was thankfully asleep, and I managed not to do anything to wake him in the two minutes I could tolerate holding him before handing him back to my mother and excusing myself to wait in the hall. Too small, too fragile, too much of a reminder of everything that could go wrong in my life (his mother was 15 when she had her first child. And my own family was never a happy one, the less said about it the better.)
But in the intervening 18 years, I had managed not to get pregnant, married a man I love, started a fulfilling career and was in a (metaphysical, at least) place and age when women generally think about babies without terror in their hearts. Holding a small child again, however, made it clear that I was not in that place.
Nobody's pushing for anything, but the offhand comments from relatives have started (from B.'s side of the family, and I don't blame anyone on mine for wanting nothing but individual happiness after we failed so spectacularly at making each other happy.) B. and I have discussed it, in the abstract - sometime, in some other place, when we're both more secure in our careers and financially, etc. And given our situation right now, I couldn't be more grateful that we don't have the additional burden of a baby.
But it's more than the financial difficulty of it. I don't feel warm inside when a baby giggles - I brace myself for the unearthly shriek it can turn into. Crying children set my teeth on edge the same way they always have, and watching their frazzled/irate/sobbing parents try to appease them only makes it worse. I feel no biological urge to turn my body into an incubator for nine months, and a vending machine for another six months to a year after that in a physically and mentally sapping process that will alter me irrevocably to an extent that no one can predict until it's done. And not that my concerns would be diminished, but they're not about "keeping my figure."
At the same time, I would have a supportive partner, someone who wants to be the same good father to a child that his father was to him. He wouldn't mind adopting, and I think coming in after someone else has cleared the hurdle of pre-verbal tantrums and potty training would do me a world of good, but I feel the vanity he doesn't in thinking that the world would be a better place with more people like him in it.
As for myself? I don't feel incomplete. I've got a literal mountain of projects there aren't enough waking hours for (not to mention all the television I want to catch up on, video games I want to play, fanfiction I want to read, etc.) And more days than not, I go to bed wondering about what the hell I'm doing with my life, much less assuming that I could possibly know what's best for someone else. People seem to do it, but is having a child to give your own life meaning really the best idea? If not that, then what? Why do people have children? I can think of some terrible reasons - save a relationship, appease their family, create a legacy - but not a single good one.
This is not trying to bait anyone; I genuine have no idea what makes people want to take on the gigantic responsibility of raising a member of society. Or is it just that, making a little piece of the world in your image, the way you wish everyone would be? Because there are better ways to do that than rolling the genetic dice and then piling on all the pressure of getting the nurture part right, too, and hoping that some random event doesn't derail everything anyway.
My father, a championship-level chess player, emphasized rationality and logic in everything: methodical steps, considered five, 10, 20 moves head. Consider your position and where you want to go, and then make a plan to get there. But it's difficult to make a plan when I still have no idea what I want while society, medical science and popular culture all scream about what that should be, which isn't making things any easier (further not helped by the fact that their answers are entirely different).
In the end, I held Zachariah's baby for all of 15 seconds, as long as it took to get her to the sofa, where I managed to sit her down and stare at her as she blew spit bubbles, babbling about how sorry I was that I had no idea what to say or do with her. And just as she was losing interest in my desperate words and flailing hands, the angel
khaleesian scooped her up and had her giggling by the time Zachariah came back, approximately a year later.
Back in the present, B. and I are coming up on the end of a weeks-long Mad Men binge, which believe it or not has been somewhat helpful to my state of mind. Talk about a show with complex views on motherhood. I fear being cold like Betty, who sees her children as obstacles to the life she gave up to be with Don. I fear being conflicted like Joan, who loves her son but who is ruthlessly pragmatic when it comes to keeping work her top priority, and how does that serve her baby? In particular though, Megan's mother has been an interesting influence, cruel to her daughter not because she's envious, but because Megan cannot manage to be happy despite having everything her mother has ever wanted (those being money and a handsome husband). "Not every little girl gets what they want; the world couldn't support that many ballerinas," she says near the end of season five, which only serves to spur Megan on harder - the intention all along, presumably.
This show seems to insist that its women could be happy, or at least not make terrible mistakes, if they would just trust in themselves (an interesting contrast to its uncharitable views on the irredeemability of men in all aspects of life). So I guess it doesn't matter why other people choose to have children, just whether that's an experience I can handle. If I can figure out whether it fits into whatever I'm trying to do with my life.
One step at a time.