Tonight was an end-of-session shindig at Milo’s camp. These things are among the hardest for me to navigate, because my one-childness (only-childness? What’s the parental analog of being an only child?) is so obvious to me then, when every other adult has two or three kids clamoring around them.
But it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t so bad when a completely delicious little boy with blond curls passed me a dozen times as he ran with that pell mell toddler gait up and down the center aisle and reminded me so much of Milo at that age. It wasn’t so bad when I spotted a couple and thought for most of the night that they, too, had only one child, but then saw them with both their daughters. It wasn’t so bad when even the hippy-dippy, living-on-a-shoestring artist couple behind us in the ice cream line were there with their two kids. (Maybe because Milo admitted to having a crush on their lisping little girl and offered to buy her an ice cream. She declined, because she had her own money. I was smitten — I do so love a gal who pays her own way.)
I’ve felt okay before, and it’s always been temporary, so I’m sure another crash is imminent (eminent? Yes! Certainly not transcendent). But it’s nice to believe for now that this genuine feeling of okay is a good sign. It’s progress. I adore progress.
It occurred to me as I sat through the endless program (Milo’s bit only took up 10 minutes) that maybe I am as happy as I would be if I had two kids. People now study these things. They find that people who win the lottery generally go back to being as happy as they were before they won, unless of course winning the lottery completely wrecks their life. Apparently people who become paraplegic in accidents also eventually achieve the same level of happiness or life satisfaction as they had before they were hurt. That’s very hard to believe, just as it’s hard to believe that having another child wouldn’t make me happier. I mean, it certainly would make me happier, because I wouldn’t be sad about not having another child, but maybe once it got worked into the rough rhythms of daily life, I wouldn’t be happier than I am now. Well, not exactly now, as in this period in which I’m dealing with the end of a dream and the hard work of learning, finally, how to be a nice wife. But now-ish. Now as in some kind of life continuous present.
How can that be possible? There’s no way to check it. I can’t imagine that any mother would say, “Yes, I can imagine that I’d be as happy as I am now without Elena/Rebecca/Asa/Asher” (those were names I’d weighed for my second), although my God I would love her if she did. I love love love mothers who can get some distance on their own mothering, who can say, “yes, it’s great, but there are other great things, too.” She wouldn’t be able to imagine life without Elena/Rebecca/Asa/Asher. There would be a big hole where E/R/A/A is now, and that would be intolerable. But if she could rewind it so she didn’t know better, what would the outcome be? What would she be doing with all the energy and love that’s going to E/R/A/A, and could she perhaps not imagine her life without that thing? This blog, my life, is playing out that experiment.
Another Door 