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I thought I would be a mother. I thought I would have a house full of children, noise, mess & love. I thought my future would be mapped out by the landmarks in my children’s lives: first steps, first words, first Christmas, first day at school. Football fields on Saturday
mornings. Dance lessons. Trips to the beach. Rockpooling. Homework. Teenage angst & broken hearts. Schools dances. Exam stress. First job. University if they wanted it. Becoming an empty nester. Careers & weddings. Maybe grandchildren if they wanted that.
I knew that’s what I wanted from the age of 12. I eventually accepted it wasn’t going to happen when I was 42. 30 years of trying to find my place on a map, & then the map disappeared. The future was blank space. No pathways, no signposts. Just blank, pristine space to fill
up with things I wasn’t interested in, never wanted, but which people thought I was lucky to have: career, free-time, lie-ins, cocktails & spontaneous weekends away.
The blank space of the future, the burden of filling it, is a recurring theme in my writing. Footsteps on a beach, footsteps in virgin snow. Tiny lines of my life tracking through huge empty spaces. Then fresh snow falls, or the tide comes in scrubbing away the lines I’ve made.
There’s a different version of me somewhere, a parallel-universe version of me, a mother-me, who knows what it’s like to love a child and be loved by a child. In the summer her beach is covered with footsteps, large and small, a joyous, criss-crossing tangle of lines.
There are sandcastles & moats & forts. The tide never comes in to wipe it all away. The beach is a map of her past & her future.
In winter her field of snow is a mess. The snow all trampled down, turned into snowmen, scooped up for snowball fights. But her footprints are strong & not alone & she has a map so she knows where to step. It snows, but only gently. The snowflakes catch in her children’s hair.
She feels close, the parallel universe me, the mother me, the thinnest of membranes between us. The membrane is like frosted-glass. I see her shadow on the other side, walking beside me. She doesn’t see me. She doesn’t need me. She has enough love in her life.
I push at the membrane, try to reach through, to touch her, but I can’t.
As usual, I don’t know how to end. I don’t know where the end is, because I have no map. I’m okay though. I’ll just keep walking forward.
#ChildlessNotByChoice #GriefAwarenessWeek #DisenfranchisedGrief
As usual, I don’t know how to end. I don’t know where the end is, because I have no map. I’m okay though. I’ll just keep walking forward.
#ChildlessNotByChoice #GriefAwarenessWeek #DisenfranchisedGrief
