children

this someday surgery

2005-04-11T04:18:06+00:00

My surgery is Tuesday afternoon. This afternoon, as I was driving out to pick up books to read while I'm convalescing, I realized something that caught me off guard for a moment: I was happy about the upcoming surgery. Yes, nervous, incredibly - anything that involves a high likelihood of general anesthesia should be treated with the respect and caution such drugs deserve. But happy. Relieved. Calm. It was going to happen, and I was glad of it - glad and grateful that I live in a country, during a time, that lets me decide the future of my own fertility.

The decision to not have children was made a long time ago, long before most of you knew me. Andrew may or may not remember, but Matthew does; one of my cross-country phone calls led him to mention that he remembers me talking about planning this someday surgery … twelve years ago. (…and to subsequently say "It's about damn time you got around to it.")

"Since I was sixteen I have been considering having my tubes tied. I have not been waiting to make up my mind, per se—I have been giving myself some years of time to ensure that my decision is not a hasty or rash one. As the years have gone on I have noticed the tenor of my questioning changing. Previously it was, "Do I want children, ever?" But in the past couple of years it has gradually moved towards, "I know I don't want children. But have I thought long enough about it to make sure this permanent choice is the right one?""

'Emily Dickinson girl,' 3 January 2001

I've had two pregnancy scares, one of which was many years ago, and one in September 2004 that made me realize just how serious I was about not having children. (It's quite a funny entry. Go back and read it if you didn't catch it the first time around.) The scare I had in September was enough to make me realize the precarious nature of my position; without something permanent and decisive I would spend the rest of my childbearing years frantic with worry over the usual lateness of my somewhat-irregular periods, wondering if the third time around, I'd roll snake eyes and end up with a consequence I really didn't want.

After the scare last September, I made myself a promise. No more waiting, no more vacillation. This had been in the planning stages for long enough. It was time for me to grow a pair, and stand behind my decision. I was twenty-eight, for crying out loud - three years past the age I'd always said "if I'm still sure, I'll have it done."

I am not brave. Had I been brave, I would have marched into a doctor's office three years ago and said, "Fix this. Now." Instead, I waited until circumstances very nearly forced my hand. After September, a couple of friends pulled me aside to talk to me, and both of them said the same thing: when the chips are down and you're facing the immediate and sudden reality of possibly being pregnant, you discover your raw, unvarnished opinion on the subject. For both of my friends, it was excitement, hope, and possibility. Me? I, uh, muttered obscenities for three days and nearly bit all my nails off. It got really hard to think over the non-stop, three-day chorus of "oh shit what am I going to do IF?"

(…and what's up with the gambling references? First 'snake eyes' and now 'when the chips are down.' I really should have a more original take on the subject, but tonight doesn't seem to be that night.)

I've struggled with the decision of childlessness for a long time. Deep down, I would like to understand why I'm different, and why the sight of a baby or a small child doesn't set off the raging maternal instinct I see in many … most … of my friends. Over the years, my attitude toward my decision has run the gamut from apologetic ("what is wrong with me?") to viciously defiant ("you want 'em? you birth 'em!") - but always with a touch of defensiveness. Even though I don't always admit it, I'm always bothered and a little frustrated when someone asks why I don't want children - because I've never heard the converse questions ("Why do you want kids? Are you sure you won't change your mind later?") asked.

I think it's because the implication is that in the end, my mind's opinion is the one that needs to be changed. It's so easy, ducks-in-a-barrel easy, to take potshots at doctors who insist on querying the minutiæ of my decision but who would find it rude and unconscionable to ask "But are you SURE?" to a woman who was trying to conceive. Both pregnancy and surgical sterilization are generally irreversible; it's oh-so-tempting to say that either both decisions should be heavily scrutinized -- or neither of them should be.

But that's a perfect world, one which bears little to no resemblance to the one in which I currently reside.

* * * * *

"A friend said to me once that while most people choose to make their legacy a living, breathing, genealogical one, that some people find they have another calling in life. Afterward, I asked myself, over and over, if I honestly felt truth in that statement—if, without having children, that in the end my life would still have meaning and value to me.

Then I remembered that I've always been a fan of Emily Dickinson."

(ibid.)

I drove home this afternoon, the windows down and the music up, the spring sunshine soaking into my skin, and I remembered that this decision was made a long time ago. After Tuesday, I don't have to worry about this any more. I'll have surgical soreness and a couple of little scars as reminders, but no fear. Not any more.

Jeff will call a couple of people after the surgery's done Tuesday afternoon, to let them know how I'm doing. If you want to be on the list, email or call me before Monday evening to let us know what number to reach you at. Once I'm situated and resting comfortably, hopefully he'll have the time to post a quickie entry on cat.net.

See you on the flip side, kids.

Line, singular

2004-09-30T04:34:32+00:00

Let's see if we can't knock out the two most important topics at once here. No point in beating around the bush, really:

1) I am, at last, on vacation.
2) I'm not pregnant.

I am scheduled to catch a flight out of Atlanta tomorrow … uh, okay, in about fifteen hours. (Perhaps I should go sleep.) I'm winging out West for close to a week of enforced peace, quiet, cooking, and shopping. I'll have my cell phone on me, but I'll likely not be allowed near any of the computers in the house where I'm staying.

You want me to get back to #2, don't you?

Hush. I'll get there.

Okay, fine. I confess. I've spent a good portion of the past week growing increasingly more concerned that I had perhaps brought home an unintended 'souvenir' from dragon*con. No matter how much I reasoned with myself, or checked the calendar, or reminded myself that I'd stopped working out this month and had major issues with my eating habits…nothing made my silly obsessive mind let go of the nasty screaming you're-a-week-late worry with teeth.

I'd done a lot of quiet thinking a few months ago and decided that as soon as we could come up with a feasible time to do it, it was time to finally get the tubal ligation Jeff and I had been talking about for, oh, about the past six YEARS.

Instead, I've spent most of the past week thinking, "And wouldn't you know it, you silly git, you finally make up your mind to get the surgery you've been wanting ever since you found out such surgery existed and less than three months later you have a slip-up and boom, you're stuck with the one consequence you absolutely did not want…."

The other half of my brain, the half that likes to sing "I Like Traffic Lights" when no one is looking, countered that with a nonstop chorus of "Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutup!"

After about four days of this, it was getting really noisy in my head, and it was starting to get pretty hard to get any planning for my so-called vacation done.

Meanwhile, nothing happened. I grew later and later. I would write down a perfectly normal item in my to-do list and follow it up with twenty minutes of sheer and utter panic.

Yesterday, in a bout of desperation, I performed my first instance of an act that virtually every adult female does at least once in her life: I bought a pregnancy test. I felt vaguely dirty doing so; I tucked it behind the frozen pizza I also needed to buy and quietly excused myself from the store using a self-checkout lane, so that I wouldn't have to meet the stare of the cashier and have to say, "Oh, no, I'm hoping that I'm NOT pregnant, but thanks for asking!"

I ripped open the box and read the directions at stoplights on the way home, in between massive mental drowning-out choruses of "La la la la la la la la la!"

I mean, knowing had to be better than not knowing, right? I'd go home, submit myself to the indignity of the pregnancy test, suffer through the longest minute of my life, then look at the little line - or lines - and know. At least I wouldn't be up all night worrying. I'd either breathe easy and laugh about it the next day, or …

"Shutupshutupshutupshutup … I like traffic lights … I like traffic lights … but only when they're -"

Oh. Light's green.

I drove home. I shoved the frozen pizza (for my poor abandoned spouse, who will be vacationing somewhere else and won't be leaving for another couple of days, thus needing pre-cooked sustenance) in the freezer, vowed to myself that in five minutes this would all be The Funniest Event Ever and sprinted to the bathroom with a pregnancy test in hand.

I read the directions - again - just to make sure that there wasn't some magic way that I could pee on the stick wrong, and took the test.

Pee on stick.
Put cap back on stick.
Rest stick on flat surface.
Do not touch stick while stick is figuring out if you are pregnant.
Examine after one minute.

This, my friends, is a load of crap. Who in the world is going to take a pregnancy test and look away for the next sixty seconds? To hell with that, people, I'm staring at that stupid stick from the moment I put it down, just daring that son of a bitch to give me the wrong answer. I'm not just staring at that stick, I'm bloody well glaring at that stick.

Two pink lines means you're pregnant.
One line means you aren't.

Twenty seconds into the longest minute of my life I yelped as a swath of pink swirled across the 'pregnant' indicator. Panic. Sheer panic. Where were my directions?

Oh. In my left hand, where they'd been for the past twenty seconds.

"You may see pink bands swirl across the indicator. This is normal." (Yeah, but does it mean I am pregnant you stupid set of directions?)

Thirty seconds into the test, the first pink line appeared. Hurrah! I had proven that I was responsible and intelligent enough to pee on a stick as directed…but had my birth control methods worked?

I waited one minute. Just one line.
Two minutes. Still just one line.

I put my head down on the counter and took a few deep breaths, then quickly raised my head up and stared at the stick, making sure that it wasn't fooling or teasing me. Nope. Still one line. I was in the clear.

Suddenly I realized that I was about to leave for vacation, and that I had a lot of stuff that needed to get done before I could do so.

I made a note: "margaritas in the hot tub."

Tomorrow night, I'll do just that…with a clear conscience.

Graphic Design and Cosmic Hint Service

2003-08-14T06:15:44+00:00

What an exciting week! Any more excitement and I think I'd have to be flushed and gasping, just to keep appearances up. I have a reputation to uphold, after all.

There's a spot of good news on the personal front, news which is so simple that it hardly seems worth noting here except for the fact that it says something about my state of mind this week: I'm not pregnant. Sure, we've got the contraception routine down, and I'm accustomed to my own irregularity, but there's nothing quite like the feeling of dread when you're a little later than your brain says you should be and then one of your new-mother friends says, "But what if you are pregnant? Would that be so bad?"To which your brain, calm and ok with your previously agreed-upon decision not to spawn, starts mindlessly screaming "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" in fear and terror. I don't know about you guys, but there are times in your life when you have the clammy-hands-of-excitement, and then there are times when you have the clammy-hands-of-fear.

I spent two days with a nasty case of insomnia, bad dreams when I finally did sleep, and a constant urge to wipe my palms on my jeans every time the subject came up in my mind.

Which was, by my estimation, approximately every 3.5 seconds. (Multiply that by two days, a massive design project, and a computer that threw a tantrum, and you can imagine what joy others must have felt in my presence.)

Love my friends. Assuming they're not demons, I plan on loving your kids too. But I think I can count this as what I like to term a "cosmic hint" - a hint so large it supersedes 'enormous' and 'blatant' and immediately goes interplanetary - that no matter what you guys may think about us having kids, that it's a bad, bad, bad idea for us.

I hugged the cats. A lot. They didn't really understand why, and Edmund spent a lot of time trying to wriggle away, and Tenzing spent most of the time wondering if this was pre-feeding taunting on my part. Again, these are not the most brilliant sentient beings in the known macroverse.

That award goes to Jeff's new allergist. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my spouse has entered the 21st century, in which it's totally in vogue to be in direct biological conflict with one's environment. This whole living-in-harmony-with-nature thing is highly overrated; it's far more fun to be able to talk at parties about what kind of pollens and saps and various airborne microorganisms and sheddings that you're allergic to.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, spouseling's allergist has confirmed what we have all suspected for quite some time: he is allergic to cats. I've been given to understand that this allergy thing isn't exactly a personal-choice issue; while one can choose to be chronically fashion-uncoordinated, one supposedly can't decide to only be allergic to pollens and saps that are only available on continents that one doesn't live on.

He gets to look forward to an entire life shared with the one allergen he reacts most strongly to: cat dander. (Sneeze-bag, formerly known as Tenzing or Fang-the-smaller, wishes me to tell you that it is crunchy and good with ketchup.) There are plenty of jokes to be made about whether I'd give up the spouse or the cats first. I think there's some social expectation about how you're supposed to cleave to your spouse, but it's difficult to know what to do when on one side, you have your life partner; and on ther other side you have medium-sized furry beings that are pointy on all ends when provoked.

Obviously, there must be a line drawn somewhere. Both spouseling and felines are quite vocal about their ownership of the house. There is talk of a neutral area being declared in the master bedroom. HEPA filters. Extra-vigorous vacuuming. Allergy shots.

There is a certain symmetrical beauty in the idea of a person who adores cats as much as I do being married to someone who, post-wedding-ceremony, develops an allergy to cats. It's the kind of symmetry that provokes large amounts of laughter.

Meanwhile, work on the dragon*con mystery project continues. Suffice it to say that I am whipping out a prodigious amount of graphic design this week, a rate of production which appears to be embarrassing at least one of the other members on the project (who reads this site). I'd love to show you what I'm working on.

No, really. I'd love to show you what I'm working on. I think it's hilarious, and my friends think it's hilarious, but the biggest part of these files' humor is in their secrecy. Our intent is for the content of these files to hit the dragon*con attending populace with no warning whatsoever. Previews would only destroy the element of surprise.

But, in better news, still not pregnant. Life might just be good after all.

Meanwhile, Photoshop beckons.

ssssshhhh serenade

2003-05-18T06:25:44+00:00

I realize that it's cheeky of me to rant and ramp about the parenting choices of other people when spouse and I do not have children ourselves, but there are some decisions that just strike me as incredibly wrong, even from a childless person's standpoint.

Between rainstorms, spouse and I sneaked off to see Matrix: Reloaded tonight (although the only actual 'sneaking' content involved was in not telling the cats we were leaving). Now, I understand this whole cultural-phenomenon thing, and know firsthand from watching my friends with children that parents' lives don't just stop permanently after childbirth, but doesn't there come a point where a parent has to ask the most dreaded question of all:

"Is this [insert activity/event name here] appropriate for my child?"

I realize that all children are different, and that activities or movies acceptable and comprehensible by one child are not necessarily right or correct for another child. Kids are a necessary part of life, and as such shouldn't be banished from polite society. However, saying that does not mean that their presence is appropriate in every situation.

I defy someone to explain to me how children, aged approximately six and eight, have any business being in a rated-R movie. Specifically, Matrix: Reloaded. I'm just curious—what particular element specifically made the parents decide the movie was kid-appropriate: the heavily philosophical subject matter? the kung-fu violence? the more graphic violence? the not-quite-graphic sex? the over two-hour runtime?

While I have no doubt that the kids behind me were able to appreciate the lovely kung-fu eye candy that M:R offered, I have serious doubts about their capability to grasp the finer points of the predestination vs. free will argument presented throughout the film. Why? It couldn't possibly be because every time the movie shifted away from action sequences to actual dialogue, I got the same back-channel dialogue repeated in Kid Surround Sound:

Kid: (stage-whisper) "Mommy!"

Mom: (stage-whisper) "What?"

Kid: (whisper) "Why they doin' blah blah blah blah?"

Mom: (stage-whisper) "Ssssshhhh!"

Kid fidgets, rearranges self in chair, kicks chair in front of them (mine)

Wait five minutes. Repeat.

Repeat for two hours, with the additional options of unrelated child-to-child discussion.

By the end of the movie, I had no interest whatsoever in decking the blond tykes ... okay, that's a lie. Or perhaps not. I really didn't want to hit them, I wanted to turn around and explain to them in excruciating detail that they were being obnoxious.

Then I would've turned a bit and slugged their mother. I had two reasons; one obvious and one not. I'm not going to trot out the "back in the old days, kids were better behaved" argument, because it is complete bullshit. However, I most certainly will trot out the "Do The Parenting" argument.

Reason #1, the "You're The Parent" section:

Part of parenting is deciding what is appropriate for your children, and sticking with that decision. She lives with those children and is ostensibly raising them; what does that say about her parenting skills when the person sitting a row ahead of her can tell that she hasn't bothered to perform a basic parenting duty?

Reason #2, the "So Act Like It" section:

I don't know about the rest of you mortals, but when I was growing up, we got one "ssssshhhh" without consequences. It was a graceful way of saying "You're a kid, and I understand that you forget these things, but this is your chance to straighten up before I inflict some consequences on you." Continual admonishments without repercussion does nothing but teach the kid in question that "ssssshhhh" actually means "be quiet or I'll just continue to tell you to say 'ssssshhhh.'"

...and parents wonder why their children won't mind them. It's very difficult to say that "children need discipline" without sounding like a sadistic horror, but there's a good amount of truth in the saying that 'kids need limits,' and that those limits need to be set by their parents. Children don't come prepackaged with an innate understanding of the society they're born into. They need guidance, instruction, and examples of how to live peaceably with their fellow humans (both children and adults)—the lessons we call politeness and manners. Taking turns. Sharing. Respecting others. Following instructions.

This instruction is the duty of the parent—these instructions and many more, both smaller and larger. This isn't the Matrix, and the kids aren't Neo—they can't just download a complete set of rules for manners and politeness from a chip; they have to be taught, and the word taught implies a teacher.

So, let me go back and revisit part of #1—manners, honey, manners. As a parent, you're the one that has to teach them to your kid. As a fellow (but unrelated and unfamiliar) member of society, I will not parent your child for you, but if forced, I will also have no compunction about publicly embarrassing you should your lack of willingness to act as a parent inflict upon the enjoyment of my life.

By all means, have kids, folks! Raise them however you like, but, for the love of all things holy, raise them to function in society. Teach them that talking, yelling, fidgeting, and running about is acceptable at play time, but that there are situations in life where you have to suck it up and behave. Then you—the parent!—have to learn to not put your kids in situations they aren't able to handle just yet. If they can't sit still for two hours, they don't need to be in a two-hour movie; if they don't understand heavy philosophical discussions, don't take them to a movie that has heavy philosophical discussions as a major selling point.

Easy to say, difficult to implement. I know.

I wanted to turn around and say something to the mother on the way out of the theatre, but I found it far more interesting to talk with spouseling on the way out. On the way home, it hit me—we had to put up with the results of her bad parenting decisions for two hours, but she gets to put up with it for a lifetime.

Fun.

Another woman's daughter

2001-05-11T18:46:02+00:00

I fear the days you stand outside my door,
too timid to ring, too determined to leave. Your
presence comes and goes, waning and waxing with the moon's
movements, from new to crescent to full. A tune

composed of someone else's notes, you are
as familiar as my dreams and fears and as far
removed from my life as I could have made you.
Was I wrong to sacrifice you to the hesitant altar

of selfishness, ambition, greed? It is easier to think
of planned vacations and toys than to sink
emotions, time, love—myself—into the bringing of life,
and thus I chose. You, my uncompleted link

between husband and self, future and past,
my choice between motherhood—or writing, at last --
never became more than a half-imagined dream.
In mind, my images of you were always precast

into the shapes of shoes that I never could fill…
throwing down stick and helmet, swearing until
a referee saw the error of his call…
an artist, pulling form from ether, remaining still

and unswerving in the face of criticism… Fainter
images: woman, lover, mother. Of these, the remainder
missing is 'child,' the starting point of living.
I make no apologies. I am not 'mother.' Instead, a painter

of words, images, stories, but not lives. Should she find
me in the hereafter, I will ask her to find
forgiveness for me, making her another woman's daughter,
for I hadn't the courage to birth her as mine.

* * * *

Have you ever been haunted by the thought of a person who was never born? What if the person was never born because you were too afraid to have children of your own, or because you felt that you were incapable of meeting your own standards as a parent?

After talking with Brad last night I was left with the image of a dark-haired girl suited up as a hockey goalie, throwing down her stick and helmet and screaming at a referee because of a bad call. That, my friends, is the kind of child I'd undoubtedly have.

Or, at least, I think I'd have. But we'll never know, and sometimes I wonder what she might have been like.

A more understandable existence.

2001-02-11T14:26:01+00:00

Last night I dreamed of a child; a very young child. I knew it was a dream, even as I went through the motions of action in the dream. Knowing this while in the dream made it all no less discomfiting as I proceeded through it.

In the dream, I awakened with the child in my arms. She—I knew it was a she even without looking—was a newborn, eyes tightly shut. In my dream-sleep I had been mulling over names, repeating combinations and trying to find one that fit.The child never moved. She slept soundly, unaware of the fuss being made over her, only her clenched fist and face showing above the white blanket she was draped in.

"Victoria Alexandra," I said to the woman sitting beside my bed. "Call her Alexa until she grows into the name."

The woman beside me—whom I believe was intended to serve as my mother in the dream—snorted. "Are you trying to name a queen, with a name like that?"

"She needs strength. Why not start with a name that can bear it?" I replied.

Weeks passed, in the stuttering eye-blink timescape of dreams. I walked—at first slowly, and then more confidently—into shops and meetings, the tiny child cradled in my left arm. Always a white blanket, almost always sleeping. Everyone wanted to know why I had not shown her sooner.

Then, dreamlike, I appeared in the town that I grew up in—miraculously unchanged from my memories. I was taken to the school I attended—a school that, intellectually, I know is no longer standing—and walked the halls with the child sleeping in my arms, solemnly unwrapping the blanket to display her sleeping perfection to people who wanted to slake their curiosity.

"Victoria Alexandra," they said. "Are you trying to name a queen?" "If she's going to be called 'Alexa,' why not name her 'Alexandra Victoria' instead?"

"Because," I said, "Victoria Alexandra is what her name was intended to be. I only had to wait long enough to discover it." At that moment she yawned and opened her eyes—and I felt a shudder of fear, hope, and terror as I realized that she was truly focused on me, un-infant-like. I could feel the thoughts unreeling in my brain, a strange stuttering pattern of thought that I recognized must be hers.

: You may not be my mother, but for now you will be my protector. Until I am capable of protecting myself, you will do. :

At that moment, I awakened to the normal sounds of a Sunday morning; my littermate cats chirruping playfully at each other in another room, the sound of my husband clearing his sinuses and typing madly on his keyboard, the dull whump! of the heating system as it turned on.

No child, no understanding, just a dream and a name.

I got out of bed, dressed in warmer clothing, and padded into the reading room to turn on the grow light for the plants. Six sprouts in the box of basil, still just one in the box of dill. The peppermint and oregano need repotting, but the thyme and catnip seem content where they are.

A more understandable existence.