Personal Essay: The Dreamhouse
Why it took me until age forty to be ready for motherhood.
by Maude Allen
June 12, 2009
I always thought women who went to fertility clinics were horrid. "They" were super-rich, vain, and wasting a ton of money on something totally selfish. I mean, they could just adopt a kid who really needed a home, right? Looking back now, I realize these clueless
judgments were actually meant to keep me from the truth: I was really, really jealous of them. They were able to admit they wanted to have kids.
For years I hid my desire to have a baby, even from myself. I always felt that bringing a child anywhere near my family, which I typically describe as "dysfunctional at best" would be completely unfair. The men in my family all have secret lives of some
sort and the women are all denial-ridden enablers. (How many empty crack vials do you need to find before you realize he's got a problem?)
Since most of my relationships had basically been reruns of my Mom and Dad's, my Aunt and Uncle's, my Grandmother and Grandfather's, I figured, quite logically, that I'd turn out much the same. Even in high school I was attracted to the perfect-on-the-outside
boy (class president) who ended up being a sinister creep. This guy not only stalked me after I broke up with him, he cornered me in an empty classroom and literally threw a room full of chairs at me.
Understandably, I didn't want to bring a kid into this depressing life picture and figured it was forever out of the question.
But something weird happened in my late twenties. I met a wonderful, sweet man who was as awesome inside as he seemed outside, and I fell totally in love with him. And after four years together I started to fantasize (often!) about building my dreamhouse.
I started carrying around a book called Building Your Own Dreamhouse.For someone who'd had long-term relationships end in tear-filled admissions like "I had sex with my sister Linda the whole time you were in Maryland" or the lovely "I can't hide it any longer: I've been prostituting myself to buy meth for the past six months,"
the level of positivity and forethought necessary for dreamhouse planning was a remarkable leap for me. "Dream" implied a future that was fantastic rather than nightmarish. "House" implied actual stability! In my world, that was just crazy talk.
Regardless, I started carrying around a book called Building Your Own Dreamhouse. Chapters like "How to Pour a Foundation" and "How to Chose a Contractor" welcomed me into the world of people who believed that life could be good. I actually began to imagine
the idea of a love not fraught with lies or denial or underground tension. If I just found the right piece of stable land, I could build that: a safe place where the bad stuff didn't keep happening to me.
Planning my dreamhouse as a place for both my boyfriend and me was too much for me at first. I started hyperventilating the first time we went to buy curtains together. I guess the thought that I could believe in something as ultimately doomed as I assumed
our relationship was overwhelmed me.
So I took it slow with my dreamhouse. At first it was just for me.
About the Author
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Maude Allen lives in New York. |
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