After being laid up for a week with the worst migraine I've had to deal with in perhaps 8-10 years, I was able to actually do something that felt something close to normal yesterday. It's odd how much you appreciate merely feeling human when you no longer have to deal with the aura, the dizziness, and the light sensitivity. Of course, every cloud has a silver lining, right? For months now I've been trying to lose an additional 15 pounds to get to my goal weight, and I've been stuck. Well, apparently being too nauseous to eat much has its benefits...because I've dropped six pounds over the past week.
Whatever it takes, man. Whatever it takes....
As I was on the treadmill at the gym yesterday, I was a captive audience for ESPN as SportsCenter played on the monitor in front of me. As they did a report on Craig Biggio, I found myself moved almost to tears right there on the treadmill. Biggio was talking about how, after playing for the Houston Astros for 206 years, he became a volunteer coach for his son's high school baseball team in his retirement. He'd never been around as his children were growing up, because there was always another game to be played and another city to play it in. Now he has the chance to give back and be a part of the lives of his children, and he's clearly having the time of his life.
What almost brought me to tears wasn't any particular thing about Biggio's story, special though it may be. No, it was about where I am and what's missing in my life because of the decisions I've made. Having long ago decided not to have children, I will never know the simple joy of being a part of a child's life in those intimate and personal ways that together comprise the connection between father and child. That saddens me more than I would have thought possible. Frankly, I never thought that feeling as I do would ever have been possible. Perhaps I'm finally beginning to grow up...and part of that process appears to mean having to deal with some very powerful emotions.
I understand the reasons I've made the decisions I have, and in some respects I suppose I should be grateful. Being childless means that after two marriages I'm not saddled with alimony or child support obligations. More than that, though, it's allowed me to do some of the things and go to some of the places that have helped to make me who I am today. I can't imagine I would have been willing to go to places where the words "sniper" and "minefield" were part of the local lexicon had I been responsible for a child.
One of my guiding beliefs is that life is, at its most basic, about decisions and consequences. Where are, who we are, and what we are where we are is the product of the decisions we make along the way. Each decision we make, whether life-changing or seemingly insignificant, carries with it consequences, whether "good" or "bad". Over time, the aggregation of the decisions we make and the consequence that follow therefrom mold us into the person we are. I'm like anyone else in that I've made smart decisions, impulsive decisions, and decisions that anyone with the mental agility of a soap dish could have handled better. Yeah, I've screwed up along the way, but amazingly enough, some of my biggest (&^%ups have led me down some pretty amazing paths.
I don't regret my decision not to have children, and I suppose I still could. Hey, I'm a guy; as long as the hydraulics still function, it's certainly possible. Realistically, though, that window has probably closed on me. I've long since accepted the consequence that I will never know the simple joys and pains of watching my progeny choose the path along which the tapestry of their lives will unwind.
(As I've been writing this, I had to take a break- actually several-, because I frankly it's difficult to write when your eyes are leaking like a New Orleans levee. Man, sometimes coming to grips with your decisions and their consequences really sucks, knowhutimean?? Reconciling myself to this reality has been a long time coming, and I have to admit that it's hitting me pretty hard.)
I've often wondered over the years what kind of father I would have been. For the longest time, I was terrified that I would turn out to be an unbending, my-way-or-the-highway, unaffectionate tyrant like my own father was. By the time I realized that I had the power to break that cycle, I still couldn't find the ability and the willingness to trust myself with the life and the psyche of a child. Rather than trust myself to be a caring, loving, and nurturing parent, I simply built a wall to protect myself from that possibility. Now that I'm old enough to find myself wondering "what if...?", I find myself doing a lot of exactly that...and it's a pretty uncomfortably emotional place to be.
In the almost seven years I've been foisting myself upon y'all, this has to be the most emotion-laden post I've written- and there have been more than a few that I've written along the way. I'm normally pretty careful to keep a wall between most of my personal life and what I write about. Even now and again, though, I like to pull back the curtain just a wee bit. Perhaps it's that I want people to realize that there's a vulnerable, at times confused, and very emotional human being behind the words. You'll never find me blogging about most aspects of my life, because I'm under normal circumstances a very private and self-contained person (perhaps too much so, as the women who have been a part of my life will surely confirm). There are some things which, as I get older, become increasingly difficult for me to safely wall off from the world around me. Clearly, this is one of them.
I've tried very hard throughout my life not to traffic in regrets. Sure, like anyone, I have thinks that I wish I might perhaps have done differently. I've been blessed to have been married to two wonderful women who quite honestly deserved far better and much more than I was able to give them. In many respects, I am and have been very fortunate, but that hardly means there aren't times when I wonder what might or could have been. I long ago realized that I would at some point in my life have to find a way to reconcile myself to the consequences of my decision to forego parenthood. It would appear that the day of reckoning is upon me...and man, I was not ready for this. Not at all....
Although you have no children of your body, you were quite proud of Adam. I hope that relationship has not ended for it was probably as close to fatherhood as you will come.
Being also childless I have many times wanted to sit and weep. Based on my own upbringing (or lack thereof) I don't know what sort of mother I would have been, and since I question my husband's ability to have been a good father it's probably a good thing there were no little ones.
These days when the gloom hits me I have to wonder if I'm just feeling sorry for myself for facing a lonely old age. Dying alone, unknown to anyone except as a patient in x bed in y room, is tough to think about. Confronting one's own mortality is tough.
Don't beat yourself up!
My husband and I decided 25 years ago to not have children, and aside from getting married, it was the best decision we've made on this plane of existence. I, too, was worried about being too much like my own mother, and just didn't want to do that to another person. I think if everyone would really honestly assess their own capacity to be a good parent, we childfree ones would be the majority, not the other way around. Being a good parent is a very, very difficult thing to do. We can't cave to what society mandates and feel bad about ourselves because we were honest and strong enough to not go along with the masses. We didn't give in with no thought, only to end up 40, broke, on an endless treadmill and wondering just how in the hell all this happened to us. I can't tell you how many of my peers have actually said, "I can't believe my life turned out like this. I don't know where I went wrong." It's all a part of just drifting along with the general concensus and not actually putting thought into your actions. You should be congratulating yourself on being way more thoughtful and deliberate than the Average 'Merkin ever is.
As for dying alone, I can tell you for a fact that having children is NO guarantee that they will be there for you in your old age. I worked years ago as a nurse aide in a nursing home. Of the 90 residents there, about 5 of them saw family on a regular basis. And in my own family, my brother is my parents' biological child. After they were told that it would be highly ill-advised for my Mom to attempt another pregnancy, I was adopted. I don't share their DNA at all, but I have been the one to be there for them. In fact, my Mom is in hospice right now...and my brother is nowhere to be seen. Having kids is not ANY kind of a guarantee that you'll have someone with you at the end. From what I've seen it's a guarantee that you'll probably end up wondering where you went wrong and why someone you sacrificed so much for can't be bothered.
My, isn't this a happy little missive.
My husband and I are both back in college, preparing for new careers for the second halves of our lives. We're both getting into fields that we truly love, and fields that will truly serve other people. We wouldn't have a chance of doing this if we were raising kids. The kids come first...anything you want to do with your life is not even thinkable until the kids are out of the house. (And these days they never LEAVE the house.) We wouldn't be able to be in college if we were putting KIDS through college, as so many of our peers are. We're putting less of a strain on the planet, as well.
If you feel truly drawn to do something with kids, there are volunteer opportunities everywhere. You don't have to be a parent to have an ENORMOUS impact on a kid's life.
Just because you didn't go along with the lemmings is no reason to beat yourself up. If you're feeling that you have something to contribute to a kid, do it.
I'm so thrilled I don't have my own kids...I hope you can get to this point in your journey, too.
God bless,
Penny
Good post. A hell of a thing to read on my 41st birthday, as I sit alone and weeping, feeling sorry for myself in a dozen, very justified ways.
Jack - I made the same decision you did and I have, at times, regretted it. Not being around to celebrate birthdays, or Little League wins or seeing my kid ride a bike for the first time, or prom night - I've missed all of those life experiences. And of course, I dread getting older, seeing family and friends disappear and having no one close to me.
But I think I made my choice for the right reasons. The world our children would have grown up in is not the one in which we were raised. Life would probably have been harder for them than for us. We do face a future of shortages, environmental degradation, overpopulation and world strife - I believed that forty years ago when I chose not to procreate, and I believe it today. I think I may have done my prospective children a favor.