Yesterday felt like a day to get through. A year and a day ago I was at home, high on painkillers, and waiting for the Sea Monkeys to exit my body, which they did in a
thankfully orderly fashion. I'm glad to have that day behind me. When it was happening, I didn't think that a year from then I'd be where I am now. I'm glad I didn't know. It would have only made it harder.
So yeah, yesterday felt like a day to just make time pass so it'd be over. I bunked off work and went to IKEA. I flippin'
love IKEA. I wandered slowly up and down each aisle. IKEA is a very family-full place and I felt a bit wobbly at times, but was generally soothed by the mountains of affordable Swedish midcentury modernity.
12 weeks ago I was examining a blood clot in the palm of my hand. I
saw a little pale nugget in it, no bigger than a piece of arborio rice,
with a dark dot in the middle. "Crap," I thought. "Doesn't look good." I
was right.
I've been studying. That's the only way I know how to process anything. I recently read a rather good
book on only child-dom, a collection of essays.
The first section was first-person essays on what it was like growing up as an only child. There was quite a range of experiences, as sibling'd children also have a range of experiences, stretching from loneliness to tranquility.
An interesting part was the section of essays by only children who were themselves facing the decision of how many children to have. Of the four essays, two of them spoke of the fear of having something happen to your only child.
This is something that's been clawing at my mind. I'm not proud of it. It seems kind of awful, like it's simultaneously devaluing the child you have (replaceable!) and the child you want (a backup!). What, like children with siblings aren't mourned? But I am so very aware of the enormous state-change between
being a parent of a living child and
not being the parent of a living child. The loss of an only child is the loss not only of that irreplaceable person, but of the state of parenthood. I was a bit comforted to find that two of the four only children decided to have multiple children for precisely that reason.
Here's John Hodgeman, who surprised me by being not only a funny guy but a deft writer.
Like a farmer who needs children to till the soil and
cannot risk having but one, so I need more than one child to lower my
risk of absolute awful heartache.
To be honest, I do
not know how this will work out. I, the only child, find it difficult to
understand how love can be dispersed between two children. And there
will be other shortages... For, yes, you will
live in an apartment, and you will have to share a room.
But
you will be freer to fail, as your errors will be outshadowed by
Hodgmina's and vice versa. And thus you will free yourselves of the
unfair burden to avoid death at all costs. By having you, unnamed male
child, I have chosen to give you both less so that at the end, as point
by point, the shape of our family disappears, you will not have lost
everything.
-John Hodgeman
Yeah, that was pretty much enough to turn on my waterworks when I read it, and again now. He's captured something I couldn't articulate, the fragility of a family of three.
In the end, though, my decision is driven by sheer terror: I worry
that something will happen to my child and having another would be the
only thing that could get me through that. I wish there were some
braver, deeper, or more theoretical underpinnings behind my ultimate
motivation for two, but that's what I come up with.
- Amy Richards
This quote doesn't offer me any insight, but it does make me feel less alone. I mean, these people were able to choose to have more children, and did (at least John Hodgeman did, I don't know if Amy Richards has yet). But it's comforting to know that this is a fear shared by other parents, parents who were themselves only children. It's not the sole reason I want another child, even the major reason, but it's there and it's something I'm going to have to work out if I'm going to learn how to live comfortably with this.
