Non-Breeder: Not On Board
My dream girlfriend denies me only one thing: fatherhood.
by John Freeman
January 18, 2007
I'll never know what was the determining factor in giving up on kids,
because shortly after my wife moved out I met N., an Anglo-Arab woman
who was raised during a war, lived in England and adamantly did not
want children. At the time, I was happy to go along with this contract
point. Yeah, kids are BAD! Kids ruin your life. Children will take you
over and make you only talk about them! After just a few weeks of
dating, we went to England to visit her family, and I watched as her
brother's two children monopolized every waking minute of his day. "It's
worth it," said Andrew, as he bounced his son on his lap, but the ten-pound bags under his eyes said something else.
As an improbable fling became a serious relationship, the reality of
what I had breezily agreed to set in — and I became very, very scared. I
reread The Corrections, and the idea that we often begin our own families
to correct or amend the losses of our own struck me like an iron fist.
But it couldn't tamp down the urge bubbling up inside me. "I want you to
know I can't give that to you," N. would say, and I'd say, "I know." Should
I decide differently, she would understand if I walked away from our
relationship to go find a woman who wanted my genetically inferior,
probably depressive, certainly neurotic but perhaps — just this once — perfect child.
But each week, the idea that I would leave N. became more unrealistic. I
don't believe people are meant for each other, but I do believe you can
get lucky. Before long, I realized I was very, very lucky and, as I
always do with something beautiful, I wanted to make it last forever. I
wanted to make it perfect, inviolate and immortal. We wouldn't get "I want you to know I can't give that to you," N. would say.
married — she didn't believe in that either. But we could adopt. I
bullied her into conceding the name Karim had always seemed sweet. That
if she had a kid she'd make sure he learned Arabic. I began to imagine
being like one of those characters in a Zadie Smith novel — so white
compared to the mixed-race people around him that his very appearance
in the world was humorously anachronistic.
Around this time, I ran into Christopher's mother at a party and
surprised her by asking, "How's Christopher?" "Wow, good memory," she
said. "He's eleven and in the sixth grade now. He's all
grown up." It caught me by surprise, for I had pictured him at a
portable age all that time. Still in his swishy little cordoroys and
diaper. I pictured him going to school in an SUV, coming home to a
house as big and white and darkly shingled as the homes that turn up in
Hollywood movies. You know the sort: a hundred-year-old colonial on a
corner lot, leaf-strewn — a pecan pie always baking in the oven.
These are just American images of what a home is, or what Hollywood
tells us is the ideal, but the longer I live in New York, the more
confused I become over the way such visuals have me furtively wiping my
eyes at the cinema — and then hating myself for being such a sop. I had
a picture of what my life would look like, and that proved to be wrong.
With each year, though, as I swear off muscle cars and watching sports,
find myself eating dinner alone at restaurants and frowning at
religiosity, it seems to have been more off-base than I could have ever imagined. I don't have time to be a dad now, let alone enough hours in the day to be a good one. I have begun hoping my older brother has a kid.
Still, going outside each day in the morning, it's as if I've left the
house without my coat. I feel as though I'm naked, improvising on
the fly. Instead of making me feel unbearably light, though, this
untethered sense of existence feels like betrayal. I know if my mother
could speak now, she would be wanting grandchildren. My father, who
takes care of her, is too busy to express this urge. Besides,
week-by-week, my mother is becoming a child again. And so even though I
have the most wonderful lover in the world and a family who loves me, I
feel burdened by a loss I can never forget. I worry that I have
given up on something important, something not programmed into me by
society but in my blood. The sensible part of me knows that it would be
unfair to turn a child into a vessel for this uncertainty. But there is
a sad part of me that understands, when it comes down to it, I may never
really know.
©2007 John Freeman and Nerve Media
About the Author
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John Freeman is a writer in New York. His essays and reviews have appeared in The American Scholar, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post Book World. |
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