Freedom
There are a lot of things you don’t buy when you don’t have kids. Sprinkles. String cheese. Gogurt. You will never pick up the check at a Chuck E. Cheese's. The prospect of a child drowning in your pool is more of a legal concern than a daily visceral panic. You have a lot of opinions about what children should be made to eat. There are no uncancellable plans.
You will never experience the ninety-nine percent of a recital that is other people’s children, or the embarrassment of playing Barrel Of Monkeys and discovering you want to win. You will never bake cookies at midnight while sober, or crumble the edges of store-bought oatmeal raisin to look like you remembered. You’re basically OK with global warming. In the nuclear apocalypse, you can hole up in your basement, secure in the knowledge there is no-one you love enough to allow them to eat you.
Sally Struthers and Save The Children hurt your heart a little less. You will never be stabbed by the look of a five-year-old just after yelling and just before tears.
There will be no reason to save your school drawings, or the journals unfortunately under the burst pipe, so painstakingly dried and de-molded. There is no reason to collect old-fashioned primers with a thought of home-schooling. No need to tell your boyfriend you’re older than you look.
No need to be sad or even remember the Barbie clothes your mother handmade-a purple velvet evening dress, a summer frock of white eyelet with a matching cartwheel hat-that you sold at a garage sale when you were eleven. Silly, anyway, to pick them out from the box of Barbies and Barbie accessories bought for two dollars by two black ladies-what were they doing in your neighborhood?-one saying, “My daughter will be thrilled.”
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whipchick is at writing camp; this was inspired by the prompt of smelling a maraschino cherry.
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You will never experience the ninety-nine percent of a recital that is other people’s children, or the embarrassment of playing Barrel Of Monkeys and discovering you want to win. You will never bake cookies at midnight while sober, or crumble the edges of store-bought oatmeal raisin to look like you remembered. You’re basically OK with global warming. In the nuclear apocalypse, you can hole up in your basement, secure in the knowledge there is no-one you love enough to allow them to eat you.
Sally Struthers and Save The Children hurt your heart a little less. You will never be stabbed by the look of a five-year-old just after yelling and just before tears.
There will be no reason to save your school drawings, or the journals unfortunately under the burst pipe, so painstakingly dried and de-molded. There is no reason to collect old-fashioned primers with a thought of home-schooling. No need to tell your boyfriend you’re older than you look.
No need to be sad or even remember the Barbie clothes your mother handmade-a purple velvet evening dress, a summer frock of white eyelet with a matching cartwheel hat-that you sold at a garage sale when you were eleven. Silly, anyway, to pick them out from the box of Barbies and Barbie accessories bought for two dollars by two black ladies-what were they doing in your neighborhood?-one saying, “My daughter will be thrilled.”
_________________________________________________
whipchick is at writing camp; this was inspired by the prompt of smelling a maraschino cherry.
.