Once upon a time, September brought golden leaves, new
clothes and the first day of school for my brother and me. While the dew was
still wet on the grass, we posed on the front sidewalk for pictures in our new school
clothes. Then we kissed Mom goodbye, picked up our sack lunches and shiny new binders
and walked the three blocks to Cypress
School, excited to meet our
teachers and reunite with our friends.
Many years have passed. For people who went on to have
children of their own, September is a time of getting ready for the new school
year. The moms who were once the children now buy clothes and shiny new binders
for their own children. They kiss them goodbye, send them off to school and sigh
in relief that their kids are taken care of till 3:00.
In the evenings, they help them with their homework and prepare lunches and
clothes for the next day. The cycle of life goes on.
But what does the beginning of school mean for those of us
who don’t have children? Some of us are teachers who say they have hundreds of
children from September to June and love them all.
Some of us are students ourselves, taking college or
university classes in preparation for new careers or just to learn. For many
years, I was one of those students. I earned my bachelor’s degree before I got
married, but I kept going back to school, studying photography and then taking
three tries at a master’s degree in writing before I succeeded. If I had had
children, I probably would never have earned that degree or spent those earlier
years going back to school. College costs so much these days. It’s a luxury
that parents struggle to provide for their children. No way can they pay for
more education for themselves at the same time.
I dropped out the first time because I was getting divorced
and couldn’t afford school anymore. A few years after Fred and I got married, I
went back to school. I spent two years taking classes to qualify for the
master’s program and was just starting to take master’s-level courses when my
stepson Michael moved in with us. I was delighted to have him, but I was
working for two newspapers and now I had a child to take care of. I never got
to my homework before midnight, and my
professors seemed to think school was the only thing we had to do. I
reluctantly dropped out.
It was only after Michael grew up and we moved to Oregon
that I had the time to finish my degree. I enrolled in a low-residency program
and pushed on through the deaths of my mother-in-law and my mother and the
beginning of my husband’s illness to finally achieve my goal of a master of
fine arts degree in creative writing. I’m still paying on my student loan at an
age when lots of people are retired.
I’m not telling you this to boast. I’m trying to make a
point. If Fred and I had had children together, we would have spent all our money
on their education. My education
would be over. Being childless allowed me to focus on my own career and
education, and that has been a blessing. When you get to feeling down about not
having children, especially in times when so much attention is placed on the
kids going back to school, think about how you are free to do things that moms
can only dream about.
Is there something you would like to do and can do because you don’t have children
to take care of? Why not do it?
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