Thursday, June 18, 2009

Say it, sister

One of the workers at the care home where Fred lives now has been reading my blog and finding it pertinent to her situation. Her situation is the opposite of ours. She's 45 and has two sons. Recently divorced and stop-traffic gorgeous, she finds herself dating younger men or even men her own age who still want to have children. She believes she could get pregnant but worries about the risks of pregnancy so late in life. Plus, she has done the math. She'd be over 50 when the child started kindergarten, in her 60s when he graduated from high school, in her 70s when he finished college and/or married and had children . . . No. She doesn't want to do that. Nor does she want to cheat her dates out of something they really want. So, she says, "I gently set them free."

She wanted to know how I came to be childless. Fred was sitting there with me as I explained that I had married two husbands who wouldn't or couldn't father my children. "I was one of them," Fred piped up. She turned to me. "How old were you when you got married?" "33." And then she gave Fred such a look, a look that said, You dog, you bastard, how could you do that to her? I wanted to jump up and hug her.

Where was she when I was 33?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My husband gets the look too when people ask why we don't have kids.

Cathy Crandall said...

Ha, isn't that the way! Mom was right when she said life wasn't fair.

XXmsXX said...

I do not have children because my husband told me "I want my kids to have a better life than I did, I grew up poor."

That was nearly 20 years ago.

My husband is resentful towards me for some reason. We have no children and no sex life, going on 2 years in August!

Sometimes I feel my husband doesn't "TRULY" love me. I made a bad mistake in my marriage. I deeply regret it, but I was ignorant at the time. All I know now is "God HATES divorce," so what am I to do???