“Can I leave at 4 today?” Ramona asks me. “Umm, I’ll try and get everything done on time.” I say. I’m losing two hours, I have to let her go early, she’s excited, needs to finish packing for her trip home. I was just counting on the time to finish my chores and get organized for the month. As I write this Jack and Fiona have broken into the fireplace childproofing gate. A new thing to climb on.
I decide while Ramona’s in Mexico I’ll do Yoga and take the babies to Play Center as much as I can. The 12 O’clock classes are amazing and it’s the perfect time for the babies to go to Play Center. I try to make online reservations, 12-1:15. It tells me 1-1:15 is booked so I can’t make my reservations. I call and leave a message. I’m in my room feeling bummed I don’t have very much time today, no painting. Then I get the call back from Play Center. The woman says they’ve made a decision this week to close Play Center from 1-3 because of the low volume of kids during that time. “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, I joined this fancy, expensive, gym because it has childcare and a great Yoga program. I finally found our fit, a good class and a good time for Jack and Fiona. I need this!” I say. She asks her manager and gets the O.K. She tells me I should just book from 12-1:00 and they will stay open the extra fifteen minutes for me, until I get downstairs. “Thanks” I’m really upset though, in fact I cry like a baby, like a little baby I’m so upset. I had the whole thing planned out. The perfect plan. It’s still gonna work, but now I’m going to feel weird. When I’m doing Savasana, I’ll worry and feel guilty, like I’m getting special treatment. “Assholes!”
I decided I really want to write more pieces about creating families in alternative ways. I’ll talk about my experiences getting to where I am. But also what is the experience of the children? I’ve really been thinking a lot about what Elizabeth Howard said, when she found out at the age of 15 she was donor-conceived. She said the discovery resulted in “Loss of identity”, “disenfranchised grief” and left her feeling “like a freak…uniquely weird and uniquely isolated.” She goes on to say “ But the solution for their ( People who can’t have children naturally) grief is not by creating grief for someone else by depriving them of the experience of being brought up by a biological parent,” she said. “Donor conception is wrong and should be outlawed by any country which respects human rights.”(Excerpt taken from: The Irish Times, “No- Vote group alleges misleading public on child issues”, written by Pamela Duncan. I included a link in my article yesterday)
There are a lot of problems with her argument. First: would she have preferred to not have been born at all? Second: what about adoption? Third: What about conception through sperm donation? There are many questions to ask. There are many unknowns. What is known, a healthy loving family is just that. It doesn’t matter how the family is made up. The structure, the struggles, the love, of having a family and being in a family trump everything else.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 