I put Fiona in the carrier on the walk down to the park this morning. I held Jack’s hand as he traversed the curbs, picked up handfuls of wood chips, and finally when my most patient self ran out of patience I picked Jack up, feeling equal weight on my back and front sides. I imagined myself living in a time or place where this would be the common way women carried children. I’m racking my mind trying to remember my dad in my life as a child. I can only come up with moments, dark moments, blurry moments. Once sitting at a round damp wood table on a chair that seemed like it would be in a bar. My dad was talking to a private detective who wore a check shirt and had squinty eyes. He told my dad about the roaches that were found in my dad’s stolen truck. I said, “Gross, why were there roaches in his truck?” I imagined inside his camper shell being covered with roaches and old food. The detective said “No, not those kind of roaches.” I was then given an explanation of the type of roaches they were, not really understanding, I must have been about eight. I remember the Louis Lamour paperbacks I would find in the mailbox with a note attached, “Jen” on the nights my dad was supposed to pick us up. When he didn’t show for over an hour my mom broke down and took me and Danny out for spaghetti and ice cream. Did he expect us to just wait around for him? Danny is on his way up to Reno right now to see my Dad get honored in the weight loss competition tonight. Then Sunday he is driving Betty and my dad down here. They will stay in a motel for the first five nights, then with us Friday to Monday. It’s gonna be a freak show. They stay up at night fiddling around and sleep during most of the morning. He’s my dad. With his grunting and consistent lateness. I wonder what Jack and Fiona will think of them? On our way back from the park I tried to let both babies walk back up the hill, but Jack sat down and cried because he didn’t want to leave the park. I put him in the carrier and let Fiona walk. She made it the whole way up the hill. She picked up a tiny arbutus flower, touched the different grasses, and pet our neighbors dog Kirby. It must have seemed like a great adventure to them. When we got back to the house they relaxed and looked at books, had a snack of avocado, pear and cheese, and are now taking a nap. I wonder if they are dreaming.
Category: memory
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A friend posted an article on Facebook, https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/people-who-dont-want-kids-are-really-smart-121622692199.html , about the choice to not have kids, those people making that decision being smart people. It was written by a mother, it was short and good. It reminded me of all my struggles through infertility and the ever burning question, when do I give up on having kids? I am reminded painfully of all the well-intended advice about getting pregnant, praying to Jesus, relaxing, “it will happen when you least expect it.” The times my husband said you’ll regret it if you don’t try one more time. Commenting on the lives of women we know without kids, saying there was “something” missing in their lives. I would get so angry at him, tell him, “You’re so wrong.” I can be just as happy living a life without children. “Those women may be totally happy without children, you don’t know.” I’d say. “What would your mom’s life be like without you and Danny?” He’d ask. Yes, it was true, my mom loved us, especially when we were all older, I mean she always loved us but our early years as a family were extremely difficult for her as a single mom. They were very turbulent times, but she did express she always planned on having babies. I can’t even say how she would have felt without us, and I don’t know how Alan can? Maybe it’s an Irish thing, his mom had ten kids and she definitely wouldn’t have been happy without having children. Part of her worry about me was definitely because of her own experience having children and the fulfillment it gave her. I think it was different for me, I was so much older than her, by the time I started trying, I was thirty four, she was done having kids by then.
When I met Alan at Thirty One years old I said, “I never want to get married or have kids.” I said this over and over again. I probably said it partly out of fear, the thought of losing my independence, being dependent on someone else, having someone be dependent on me, that all scared me. I also felt like the world was a hard place and life was hard and I didn’t know if I wanted to bring someone into our world. My idea about having children started to soften, and I was willing to try for Alan, he definitely wanted kids. We tried and tried and tried, month after month, year after year. We went down the list of things to try, and people would probably think I really wanted to have kids putting myself through all that physical and emotional pain. The amount of doctors’ visits, the disintegration of my psychological wellbeing, almost to the point of thinking I needed to be admitted into a psychiatric hospital. I literally went crazy trying to have a baby when I knew I’d be fine without one. This is an expert from a Self-progress report I wrote in 2012:
“Now if we agree the twitch is caused from stress, then it was caused by an accumulation of stressful events unfolding over the past 5 years. This is just a theory. Maybe starting with the death of my mom, the failed IVF treatments, the massive bleeding, from the pregnancy, repeated trips to the ER finally ending in miscarriage, applying to graduate school, completing an intense year, debating over using a surrogate, going through a very emotional situation with her, maybe the twitch was just caused by all this?”
I had a very bad facial twitch, it lasted over a year. I was embarrassed. The constant thoughts in my mind were “should I give up having a baby?” Alan and I would have discussion after discussion about it. He always said, “I think you’ll be happier with kids, I think you’ll regret it if you give up too soon.”
This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote called Identity Crisis also from 2012:
Maybe I don’t even want kids now. When people ask, “do you have kids?” and I reply, “No, we’ve been trying.” They always say back “it’ll happen, just don’t think about it, stress is the worst thing when you’re trying to get pregnant.” I really hate those conversations. In Ireland, my husband’s mom made an appointment with a priest. “He has the relic of St.Gerard” she tells me. We get to the Ahaskeragh Abbey, the priest lets us in the door, in from the cold and the darkness. The priest is wearing a brown cardigan, wool slacks, grey hair, he has rosy cheeks. I am starting to feel guilty, I don’t believe in any of this and he’s such a nice man. Maureen says, “Thank-you so much father, this is my son and his wife, they have been trying for a baby without luck.” We follow the Priest into a room, where the relic is. He places the relic on my belly, it’s a piece of a bone in a glass jar. I start to giggle, I’m embarrassed, I want to believe.
It was a long, long, road and the decision to keep trying was extremely difficult, the decision to give up would have been even harder. Now as I sit here at 3:32PM on Tuesday afternoon, babies in play and packs hollering for me to come get them, I was hoping they would take a nap! I feel so removed from that pain, from that decision that had to be made. I feel like I made the right decision, I feel like Jack and Fiona are meant to be here with me. I am glad I decided to have kids even though I knew I would have a great life without kids, in fact my husband and I had decided we were going to become world travelers if we didn’t have kids. And that would have been quiet nice! But seeing Jack and Fiona’s delight today at Tilden Park on the Steam Train is beautiful as well, it’s precious in fact. Learning how to keep painting and writing while raising babies has been the biggest challenge in my life, and the most, I hate to use the word, Fulfilling! Even though I always have so much cleaning to do, I never get a morning off, my work day goes from 6:30AM until 8:00PM, every day, I think it’s worth it. I couldn’t live without Jack and Fiona now, I love them so much.
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I am ready to receive, I need to nurture myself. I can’t worry about other people anymore, not for a while. Now is not the time. I need to protect myself first, to take care of Jack and Fiona and Billy. To be here for Alan, Danny, and my good friends. I need my energy for painting and writing. I don’t have energy for fixing, creating, spending time with people or family who drain me, who ZAP my energy, who take and take and take as much as they can get. I am liberated from that now.
I decide my Dad and Betty cannot stay at our house, don’t want them contaminating it, don’t feel comfortable with them staying here. My Dad and Betty need to gain my trust first. I owe them nothing. Our dad helped take care of us the first six years, but we were on Welfare and food stamps. How can I calculate what I owe him? He left me three messages the other day. “Yeah this is Dad, Please give us a call when you get a chance. We love you.” Then a few more asking if I was going to be able to make it to the TOPS International Recognition Day. The night they honor my Dad for being runner up for the State of New Hampshire. I still don’t understand because my Dads never had a weight problem. I called him back, 9:00pm our time, 12:00 am their time. They talk together on the phone, meaning I can’t talk to my Dad without Betty on the line too. They are so excited about TOPS. Betty is so proud of my Dad. They sound like they are on speed. Or like they are getting ready to pull off a heist and they’ve got it all figured out. It starts stressing me out. I tell them “I have to go, I have to go to bed now”.
I take ½ a klonopin. Don’t want to think about them, just wanted to sleep.
“A lot of us find it easy to give.” Says Grace, the Yoga teacher. “It’s much harder to receive, to be receptive”. We begin our practice, breathing in, breathing out, flowing, meditating, releasing, opening and receiving.
I’m having a quiet moment. Thursday morning, 9:30 am. The babies are sound asleep. Everything is a huge mess but I don’t care. I hear birds singing, the hum of my lap top and the refrigerator, and every so often the chimes ringing.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 