Motherhood and Choosing

I woke up this morning and read words about motherhood and loss and how sometimes those two words speak to the same thing.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be a mother. There is a small quiet longing but more than that there is a fear of being trapped, doing it wrong, changing my mind way too late. But I want family. And I want the name of my family to continue. It is something I feel complicated about. Like maybe it speaks to some deep seeded white supremacy that I want to continue my line. But maybe it’s just because my blood speaks to brilliant gentle men and women who love and fight with dirt under their nails. And their faces, their forms, haven’t been properly honored yet. Maybe it’s just because I don’t want to decide that their name, their legacy, dies with me.

I remember what it was like to be 15 and trying to remember to take a pill each day at the same time. I remember asking my Mom permission to have a different fate. One that didn’t include brainstorming middle names for my child in high school English class like she did. I remember all the sex I had as teenager and how deep that first love went and how we never used condoms and how I never worried about getting pregnant. I remember being fiercely pro-choice because the numerous abortions racked up by the women in my family probably saved my life and because I assumed that some day I’d need my own.

Years later I remember my best friend telling me I needed to buy a test and us walking the aisle in Target. I remember only being able to afford the cheapest one and her giving her last 5 dollars to the hope that maybe the pricier one would be more accurate. I remember the grief I felt when I realized that period in 2003, full of thick clots and fast moving blood, could have been the beginning of a choice or a child. I remember wondering if having that child would have saved their would be father from dying a year later. I remember being grateful that the choice was taken out of my hands.

I always assumed that my choosing around motherhood would come with the weight of urgency and intuition. An unexpected wanting or knowing. I assumed I’d have to make that choice several times over. This was the only rhythm of parenthood that I knew. It was foundational. It was never questioned. Until just last year when I dug it up and named it. And there is no shame here. No judgment. Not even a desire to say that it’s wrong. In fact it still feels true. Which calls my motherhood into question. Cause now there can be no happy accidents.

And there is this feeling that if I had accidentally gotten knocked up, kept the child and hated being a mother that I could shirk some of the responsibility. After all it wasn’t planned. And even if I hated my child there would still be some who praised me for carrying it to term. I don’t have that comfort, that fucked up loop hole anymore.

So I don’t know if I’ll ever be a mother. If I’ll ever be ready for the responsibility and joy it would bring. If I could ever learn to make that choice without the urgency. If I have it in me to re-route the history of my family and choose from a place of wanting.