Today I’m sharing an
excerpt from my Childless by Marriage book. Since my mind is full of
earthquakes and tsunamis for another writing project, we’ll look at this
section from my chapter “Do We Ever Grow Up?”
“Although I never had children of my own, I still remember
with guilt how my stepson Michael would get hungry and cook his own macaroni
and cheese while I was off chasing newspaper articles. When the epic 1989 LomaPrieta earthquake hit, Michael was home alone. Despite books and knick-knacks
falling down around him, he ignored all previous instructions and sat under his
bedroom window until the house stopped shaking. Then he ran to his friend’s
house, not next door to the daycare lady, but to John, whose parents would end
up taking care of him more than I like to admit. Where were we? Fred was
driving home from work, watching the power poles sway and the pavement move in
waves, and I was at the downtown library reading microfilm for an article on
urban anger.
Where did I go after that quake? First I hit the pay phone
in the parking lot (no cell phones yet), eventually locating Michael and Fred.
Then I thought about going home.
Big, knock-you-off-your feet aftershocks hit every couple
minutes. The library was closed, the floors buried in fallen books and shelves.
The power was out; we had no stoplights. I could see an endless stream of cars
heading south, which was where I lived. So I didn’t go south. I went west, back
to my parents’ house, sitting in the dark with them until bedtime, raiding
their fridge when I got hungry.
Meanwhile, Fred had gotten home, collected Michael and
started cleaning up. My office was the epicenter of fallen office supplies.
Books, binders and that six-pound rock my father gave me years ago covered the
carpet, but it was cleaned up before I got there. Likewise, the broken clock
and the broken coffee mugs were gone. Fred, a parent, took care of things,
while I reverted to the daughter role . . . .
If you don’t have children, are you doomed to perpetual
self-centered child status? If I had children of my own waiting alone in South
San Jose in the dark as aftershocks shook the area, wouldn’t I have done
whatever I had to do to rescue my babies, even if I had to walk or crawl the whole
eight miles, rather than going to my parents’ house? Does it count that if it
happened now, I’d do it for my puppies, fearing those poor dogs would be
crushed under a bookshelf?”
Some people argue that
people never really grow up until they have children. What do you think?
**************
Dear readers,
Last Friday’s post titled “I’m childless and widowed, but I’m free”
was re-published as a Huffington Post blog yesterday. This is pretty exciting
for me, bringing extra attention to me and my book, but I want to direct you to
the comments. At last look, there were well over 100 of them. The article
started a pretty interesting discussion about childlessness that you might want
to get in on. Click on over to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-fagalde-lick/childless-i-wanted-kids-instead-i-got-this_b_2732967.html to
see what people are saying.
