I am your mother

I’ve never wanted kids. I thought that was an immutable fact about myself. It made me feel like a better feminist. I was rejecting the nuclear family, the idea that women are meant to be mothers. I was going to be one of the childless sixty-year-olds with their fabulous outfits who everyone heralded as doing the truly brave thing, which was not to indulge this patriarchal expectation for family. It made me feel like I was morally and philosophically superior – I believed that wanting children was an inherently selfish act, especially in the world we live in. My whole life, I’ve been a sensitive person: emotionally, physically, mentally. Children are great at exhausting you. They puke when they have to puke. They cry when they have to cry. They pull your hair, grab your wrist, make your stuff sticky with their little hands when they want to. I hated men who wanted children, you don’t want to truly be a parent, I thought. Men couldn’t want to be parents, because my father wasn’t really a father. Men couldn’t want to be parents, because I can hardly name a friend of mine who’s close with their dad. Men couldn’t be good husbands, because all the Tiktoks in my feed show me men who refuse to do dishes, who can’t pick the right can of soup at the grocery store, who choose a football game over something important to their wives.

I have no way of knowing if those videos are real. I know that at nine years old I was projectile vomiting and my dad checked on me periodically for an hour, not crossing the threshold of the bathroom. He’d ask, “Are you alright?” And I’d say yes, because I wanted to be a grown-up. At the time, I liked the feeling. I was happy to not be doted on. I can handle myself, I thought. I don’t need anyone. Not a husband, or a child, or a family. 

I still struggle to call my mother when something’s gone wrong. I don’t like it. I don’t like when anyone sees my flaws, and yet they are everywhere: my unmade bed, the emails I’ve sent to professors about my plights, the pimples in my hairline that I have been hiding with a side part – a hairstyle which I haven’t worn since third grade. The soles of my feet are dirty, my fingernails should be clipped more regularly, my teeth are stained yellow from drinking tea, or not flossing when I should be, or going to bed after a pint of Ben and Jerry’s without brushing. So I don’t reach out even though I know everyone can see. Maybe that’s why – everyone has already labeled me as a mess, so why open myself up to what they truly think? 

And kids. Kids tell you that your tummy looks bigger than it did a few months ago, that their friend’s mom from school called your house a mess, that your clothes look terrible. We teach them how to talk only for them to be walking vials of truth serum. I don’t want to know what a kid would say about me, not when I’m in the grocery store and I suck in as I walk down the freezer aisle, watching my side profile in the reflection of the doors.

I had a dream last month that I woke up and I couldn’t remember the last two years of my life. I had passed out at a public pool and was in some sort of storage room on a makeshift stretcher. The teenage lifeguard reassured me I was going to be fine and went to find my family. I expected my mother and sister. Instead, a man I didn’t know came in holding a baby girl; she was two. I looked down only to find that I was pregnant, immediately vomiting in my dream. My husband rushed to my side to help, and I pushed him away and ran outside. The fresh air wasn’t good enough. My mom was in town to help me with the pregnancy. I found her on a metal chair underneath an umbrella.

She said she felt terrible that I wasn’t feeling well, that she had terrible dizziness and nausea when she was pregnant. I told her I couldn’t remember anything from the past two years. She didn’t believe me. I could still tell you exactly how my swollen feet felt, how the arches ached, warm on the poolside’s surface. I could tell you exactly what it felt like when my armpits and breasts were sore, how it felt to wake up every morning in that dream and go straight for the toilet. I was so tired all the time. My stomach was heavy and yet it felt like a grounding force. I found myself touching it as I walked through the house or after vomiting. I was so sick because of the thing inside me and yet I’d be sitting on the bathroom floor, cradling my round belly as if to tell the fetus it was going to be okay, that its mommy was here, that I was going to take care of everything.

A week into the dream, I took my daughter to an antique store. She wore her light brown hair in little high pigtails that I tied up myself. She almost broke a snowglobe and I picked her up to show her knick knacks on the higher shelves. At some point between the pre-loved paintings and the Christmas decorations, I lost her. I’ve had anxiety all my life. The panic I felt was nothing like anxiety. It went straight to my nerves; adrenaline and the threat of tears. I didn’t even process it, my feet moving through the aisles until I found her. She was sitting on the floor near the toys, playing with a car. I scooped her into my arms and suddenly I felt less afraid of the two years I couldn’t remember.

I woke up soon after that, the rest of the dream a blur of time spent with an imaginary husband and my imaginary family. When I held my little girl in my arms after losing her, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt like I’ve loved something that much. I was worried that she was in danger without me, but it wasn’t quite that. I was hunting for her, her joy, her presence quieting the emptiness. When I held her again, the air had no more fear. I was immediately certain that I could do anything, handle anything for her. I knew in an instant that I didn’t care about my circumstances – my puffy toes in my sandals, my aching joints, my right arm that had gotten more built over time from carrying my daughter. It was just her. 

I see her all the time. She runs past my feet while I’m scooping yogurt and granola into the chipped bowls we have at my apartment. She’s across the street from my building at the park with my mom, pointing at ducks. She’s in her booster seat in the backseat when I go out, and I turn around to make funny faces at her. I look at band-aids when I get my medication, in case she scabs her knees. 

My mom always told me I’d eventually want kids. I refused her vehemently for many years, and in the past four it’s dwindled down to a small protest. Wanting kids is selfish – I still think that. I want my daughter back because I never knew I had the capacity to love something so much. I want her to laugh because kids are truth serums in all the beautiful ways, too: smiling at flowers and bees, chasing birds on the beach, playing with otters through the glass, running back to go on the slide a second time, pointing at the clouds and thinking something magical is happening in the sky. I just know that I want to lie in a field with her, grass scratching my skin. It would tickle me, even the little scabs on my arms that I have from picking when I shouldn’t. Maybe I wish we could lie there together, but I am the little girl throwing up alone. I am the little girl embarrassed of her belly, the fat that I cherished so much in my dream. She has pigtails that I tied and my mom brushed my hair that morning until I cried, because my blonde strands are fine and get tangled so easily. And I would tell her that sometimes my parents yell so loud I curl up with my blanket over my head, even though it doesn’t muffle the sound enough. And she’d tell me her mommy cries too, that sometimes she can’t even clean the house. I’d say I know. I’d say I’m sorry.