Menopausal Musings - First but not Last

While Preachy has been up in Canada, I have been sneaking around the house cleaning things. Things like rooms, desks, shelves and other apparatus that normally doesn’t get touched due to Preachy’s penchant for large amounts of dust. I try to be tolerant, but take advantage of the opportunities, too. Anyway, in cleaning up one flat surface or another, I came across a book Preachy ordered through the mail. I thought it looked interesting, so I took it to bed with me.

It’s where I do most of my reading. The book is a collection of essays about different aspects of life and some of the bigger choices we make at different times in our lives. Marriage... or not. Children... or not. Divorce... or not. Where and how to live and why and with whom. How to handle crises and also the predictably unpredictable, like your dying parents coming to live with you or your children coming back home because it’s too expensive "out there". How do you do these things with grace, with equanimity and with a smile on your face when your adult unemployed kids run up your credit cards?

My eye and mind gravitated to those chapters that had to do with the situations and choices I have made, consciously and unconsciously. It goes to show how blindly a person can go through life that I suddenly realized that some of these choices, made in good conscience and thought, had been made much longer ago in my life than I had realized. Or maybe wanted to admit. Do I sound crazy? I sure felt that way. Geez, look at that! I made up my mind about that 25 YEARS AGO! And haven’t thought a thing about it since.

Although menopause is not a choice even under the best of circumstances; as I lay there in bed the encroachment of reproductive senescence into my life became emblematic of other choices, specifically that of choosing not to have children. I’ve always believed this was one of the best choices I’ve ever made and here’s why:

- All I had to do was grow up with my own mother to realize that I probably would not be a good parent. As I got older, I realized that I was too much like her emotionally and psychologically, reinforcing my initial thoughts and feelings.

- I’m one of the most selfish people on the planet. Parenthood, and especially motherhood, is one of the most unselfish things a person can do. I have always known I was not cut out for the unselfish in life.

- I am NOT a patient person. Period.

There were other reasons, too. My first husband actually didn’t want kids. Or at least that’s what he told me. We won’t get into what I think he really meant. And, very quietly, I learned that I didn’t want children, either. Or at least not children with him. And that was okay with the exception of about a year right after my mother died. Desperately grief-stricken, my reproductive urges came on with a vengeance and had he put up with it, I would have conceived and replaced my mother on the planet several times during that year. That’s really all I wanted to do, replace my mother. It wasn’t about the altruistic at all.

Now I’m menopausal. Now certain kinds of life issues are starting to peep out from behind the corners. It’s getting depressing... and scarey. I am not young, I am not old... but I can see it coming and I wonder what will happen. If Preachy dies, when one or both of us become debilitated. We’re not rich and can’t afford round-the-clock help. We have no children that might help out even a little. As much as I love my nieces and nephews and believe they love us in a distant and friendly kind of way, they do and will have aging parents of their own. Preachy’s daughters love their father, but their life loyalties lie with their mother’s family and on the other side of the country. Maybe I should have thought longer or deeper or more often about the option of having kids... ? As an investment in my own future? Is that selfish, or what?

I’m still convinced I would not have been a good parent. I think about a guy I dated before Preachy and I took up together. He had an eight year old son and I can’t tell you how many times I would have liked to throttle that kid. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the only way to maintain a relationship with his father was to stay as far away from the kid as possible when he was around. It worked for awhile, but not for long. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make ‘em drink.

The fact is that very shortly now I will never have the choice. So the choice becomes not a choice but a fact. I will never have children of my own. I don't regret it, but I am beginning to see and understand the consequences of that particular choice. Specifically I will never have children with Preachy. In spite of everything, my self-knowledge, my insights over my lifetime... not to mention other extenuating circumstances... I find that kind of devastating.