Year: 2010

Longing for the Sleeping Child

Sue Fagalde Lick childlessness, dogs as child substitutes, longing for children

As darkness descends over Highway 20 on my way home from Albany, it’s pretty, with soft gray and medium gray sky, gray-green trees and shrubs, people heading home in their cars. Annie is curled up sleeping in the back.

A warmth rushes through me. I have had this feeling before with a sleeping dog. I think how sweet it would have been to have a child like that. They would have been more energetic earlier, but how wonderful it would be to have them sleeping beside me now.

I could have watched them grow from babies to children to adolescents to teenagers to adults, watching the changes, watching them learn, teaching them everything I know about life. Finally they would be companions and helpers in my old age. They could carry on family traditions, keep the photo albums, take my name and my genes into the future.

All it takes is a sleeping dog to make me feel the pain of childlessness again. I missed something so huge, so vital. It’s like four part harmony was offered for the song of my life and I only played the alto and bass, with no melody.

It just kills me. I feel like I have to do something about it. I know there’s nothing I can do. It’s too late, but I can’t accept it. I wish this were a sleeping child in my back seat right now. My children would be adults, but my grandchildren could be riding with me through this gorgeous night. Instead, I reach back and pet Annie’s soft gold fur. Her tail flaps, and I see her eyes glowing at me in the dark. Thank God for dogs.

Do you give your pets Christmas presents?

Sue Fagalde Lick Christmas gifts for pets

I’m back from my eye surgery. I still can’t see as well as desired, but I will soon. All hell is breaking loose with my husband in the nursing home, but hey, it’s Christmas and my best friend is close at hand.

Her name is Annie. Technically, she’s a dog, but I think both of us forget that fact most of the time. Because she is my best friend, housemate and pseudo-child, I’m wondering if I should get her something besides another box of Milkbones for Christmas.

I don’t usually buy gifts for my dog. She chews up every squeaky toy, panics if I put anything kind of decoration on her, and already eats too much. Plus, she doesn’t know or care about Christmas–although she did eat the plastic hand off a snowman yesterday. Her favorite thing in the world is snuggling in my lap (all 74 pounds of her). All she wants for Christmas is for me to sit down for a few minutes–or share that great-smelling box of Portuguese sausage my aunt sent me.

However, I’m in the minority. Surveys by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association and the American Veterinary Medical Association show that 63 percent of pet owners give their pets Christmas and birthday gifts. After all, they’re members of the family.

How about you? Are you giving your cats and dogs toys, treats or new clothes this Christmas? Do you think it’s crazy or makes sense because they’re your babies?

What about your parents? Do they give your pets presents in lieu of gifts for grandchildren?

Do you sign your pets’ names on your Christmas cards?

I’d love to hear what you think about this.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Let’s all celebrate what we DO have and not worry about what we DON’T have.

What’s it like to be childless during the holidays?

Sue Fagalde Lick holidays without children, stepchildren and holidays

Hi there. I’m double-posting today because I’m having eye surgery tomorrow and don’t know how soon I’ll be back online. With luck, it will be next week, but just in case . . .

Let’s talk about Christmas–or Chanukah, which began yesterday. Do you feel left out at this time of year because you don’t have children to exchange gifts or celebrate with? What about stepchildren? Do they fill the gap? Do you spend the holidays together or apart? Do you exchange gifts? Or do the stepchildren disappear because your spouse doesn’t have custody during the holidays?

Do you skip the whole thing by heading to a sunny resort somewhere?

What’s the holiday story at your house?

Do I have children?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, stepchildren

I got to the space on the Who’s Who form where it asked for the names of my sons and daughters and decided to come back to it another day.
At the furniture store where we bought a new mattress, we told the lefthanded salesperson that we were both left-handed, too, and she innocently asked if we had any children. “No,” I replied, then looked at my husband said, “Well, he does.”
Last Mother’s Day, I told anyone who asked that I was not a mother. Period.
What happened to my stock answer of “I have three stepchildren?” For years, that’s what I said, that’s what I wrote on forms, that’s what I put on those pesky high-school reunion questionnaires, that’s what I wound up telling Who’s Who.
It was a good answer. It acknowledged my husband’s sons and daughter while conveying that I have not actually given birth. People would know that yes, there were children in my life, even if they weren’t mine. I could go on to discuss being a Boy Scout mom, dealing with teenage attitudes, planning a daughter’s wedding or welcoming grandchildren into the family. Just don’t ask me about birth, colic or potty training because I don’t know.
But that was years ago. The kids are grown. My stepdaughter has a granddaughter now, and I may never see that child outside of Facebook.
It’s partially our fault because we moved away to Oregon–something I would never have agreed to do if I had children of my own back in California.
The step between me and my stepchildren became a chasm when my husband came down with Alzheimer’s Disease and moved to a nursing home. He doesn’t always remember that he has children. And now, when people ask, I just say no. It’s easier. I still care about them and hope they care about me, but the only thing we have in common these days is our last name.
My, this is a gloomy post, isn’t it? It’s really okay. It’s just a fact. What about you? When people ask if you have children, do you count stepchilden or other non-biological children in your life or just say “no.”

Build a robot baby for Christmas?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, robot child, Thanksgiving without children

Let’s start off with an interesting news item. It seems this childless couple in the UK built themselves a robot they named AIMEC, and now they treat him (how do they know the gender?) as their son. He’s brilliant, funny, musical, and helpful around the house, they say. Maybe they’ll even make him a baby brother. Ladies, if your husband doesn’t want an actual child, maybe he’d go for this. Most guys like gadgets.

But seriously, Thanksgiving is this week. Right away, our holidays don’t look like the ones we see on TV because we don’t have children and grandchildren to gather around the table eating turkey and pumpkin pie. Unlike parents, our plans don’t revolve around our kids. That gives us some freedom to choose what we want to do, but it also may spark feelings of sadness and loss.

I’ll be spending Thanksgiving with my dad at my aunt’s house. My brother is coming, and I’ll see some cousins I haven’t seen for a while. But I’ll be the one flying solo, the one whose life bears no resemblance to everyone else’s.

What can we do? I suggest we all spend just a little while thinking about what we don’t have and a lot of time feeling grateful for what we do have. One of my friends at church, for example, is in a wheelchair. She can’t walk, she weighs over 300 pounds, her husband died recently, and she has no money and no way to earn any. Compared to her situation, I am blessed in so many ways.

Let’s count our blessings, folks. It could be worse.

Are you a childless stepparent?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless stepmoms, step-parenting, Tiffany Lee Brown

How many of you are childless stepmothers? Me, too. My husband came with three children. That led to two step-grandchildren. Now there’s a step-great-granddaughter, but I’m way too young for that.

We do not have a warm and fuzzy relationship. In fact, now that they’re adults, we don’t have much of a relationship at all. But at least when we do cross paths, we hug and say nice things, unlike some other steps.

I have been reading postings at the Childless Stepmoms forum. If you’re looking for company, you might want to check it out. Be forewarned: What I see there most is a lot of anger. The childless stepmoms often seem to be at war with the biological mothers and with the teenage kids. The younger children are usually all right, but there are constant battles over child support, visitation, discipline and other issues that come from sharing children. It’s a good place to vent with friends who know what you’re talking about.

What is your experience with step-parenting? Do you think it’s harder because you don’t have children of your own? (I do.) I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Are you a family without kids?

Sue Fagalde Lick family as code for children, holidays without children

Well, we survived Halloween, when the world is filled with little kids in costumes and a few adults who feel the need to dress up. I stopped in Corvallis that weekend and found myself in the midst of a chamber of commerce event that filled the streets with costumed children and harried parents. I saw spidermen, Lady Gagas, princesses, dogs, a ninja turtle, and more. Part of me was glad I didn’t have to deal with the whole thing, but part of me wished I had a little one to dress up and take around the neighborhood.

Our church had a Halloween party that night. The flyers promoted it as a “family” event. I knew from past experience that “family” is code for “kids.” All of the activities and refreshments would be designed for people under the age of 12. So I stayed home.

Have you noticed that everything advertised for families is actually geared to people with children? A childless couple apparently is not a complete family. It grates on me sometimes, especially now that I’m a party of one (husband with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home, if you haven’t been keeping up.)

How many people live in a standard two adult-two kid unit anymore? If they do have children, eventually those children will grow up. The word “family” should include all different configurations of people who love each other, even if none of them are children.

Now we just have to get through Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even if you don’t celebrate those holidays, the media has already begun to bombard us with images of happy families that always include children. Look around, folks. We don’t all have kids.

How are you dealing with the holidays this year? Are there certain occasions that are especially hard? Do you have advice for those who grieve this time of year?

Have you ever felt this?

Sue Fagalde Lick baby craving, childless, need to hold a baby

I’m in church playing the piano for 5:30 Mass. A baby has been gurgling and whining throughout the Mass, and now I hear him letting out a wail. His mother is standing in the aisle bouncing him. Suddenly out of nowhere I have this bone deep physical need to hold a baby. I’m not even sure I know how, but I need to. When I realize that it’s unlikely I’ll ever have the chance to do that—I’m estranged from my stepchildren and step-grandchildren and live far from my niece and nephew—I just want to wail.

I lose all track of what’s going on in the Mass for a moment because it hits me so hard. I look back on the last 26 years with my husband and think “What happened?” I was married, then alone, then married and now I’m alone again. I have no babies to hold. I don’t think there’s any amount of compensation or redirecting of mother energy that can counteract that physical need.

I know there are childless women who claim they have never felt a desire for children and don’t expect to ever feel it. God bless them. But for me and maybe for you, it’s such a deep physical need that no amount of logic will make it disappear. It’s a loss which I will always grieve. Just as I miss my mother, miss touching her, miss the way she smelled and the sound of her voice, I miss the children I never had.

It’s like when you’re so hungry that you can’t think of anything else. You can’t talk it away. You need food or you will die.

I’m thinking maybe it’s time to stop writing about being childless and go find someplace where I can hug babies. Who is going to let this 50-something childless stranger hug their children? Mothers would see me as a threat. I can hug puppies, but not human babies.

I tune back into the Mass in time to play the next song, but the feeling that something’s missing lingers.

Do you ever feel this way?

How can we use our mothering energy?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, mothering energy, other ways to mother, Sue Fagalde Lick

In a comment on a previous post, Elena said she wished she knew how to use her “mothering energy.” I wanted to flip out an easy answer about getting involved with kids at her church, a local school, or some kind of social program. But then I realized I would not feel comfortable doing any of these things. I have minimal experience being around children. I am utterly unprepared to teach or take care of them. I could learn, but the idea makes me nervous. I know, they’re just kids and I was one once, but I feel less qualified to work with children than I feel about the accounting job someone just suggested I apply for. At least I have been balancing checkbooks (sort of) for decades.

Mothers and others might find it difficult to believe that a woman could go through life spending almost no time with children, but it happens. It happened to me, and maybe it happened to you.

These days I lead singing with the children at our church on Wednesday nights. It’s fun, but another woman does all the talking and interacting with the kids. I just sing and play my guitar.

Some childless people have lots of kids around them. Maybe they come from big families where they took care of their siblings or they have nieces and nephews they adore. Some are teachers or work with kids in daycare or medicine or some other field. They’re using their mothering energy all the time. We could volunteer at church, school, or the children’s shelter to be around children, but if you don’t feel comfortable with that, I understand.

Let’s look at it another way. What is mothering? Beyond actually giving birth, it’s taking care of someone else. God knows we all need that, no matter how old we are. We can provide food for the poor, company for the lonely, help for anyone who needs it. And it doesn’t have to be human. We can take care of dogs. We can grow flowers or tomatoes.

And we can make things, using our creativity in so many ways, whether we write books, bake bread, make sculptures or program computers.

I know it’s not the same as having children, but moping about what we don’t have doesn’t help for long. Grieve for a while, admit that it sucks, then find some other way to use your motherly powers.

What are your thoughts on mothering energy?

Wise words for women without children

Sue Fagalde Lick cancer risks of childless women, Christiane Northrup, menopause for childless women, mommymystic, rebirthing, women's energy bodies

“Birthing is in every cell of you. You do not have to have a baby to experience the essence of you.” Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of the fabulous Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, said that on public TV last week. I was in a hotel room in Washington state, using the TV for background noise as I got dressed. Suddenly my ears perked up. What did she say? Hey. Northrup also stressed that the world needs its childless “aunties” for the all things they do.

Northrup, who is in her 50s, often talks about rebirthing and the opportunity women have after menopause to create themselves anew. For childless women, we find some peace because our body has ended the debate on whether or not we should have children. The issue is settled. Certainly it’s that way for me. Oh, I still wish I had kids and grandkids. I still ache for the loss, but it’s easier to accept because there’s nothing I can do about it. I must live the life I have.

In some ways, not having children can be a blessing. Yesterday I came across a fabulous post called “Women’s Energy Bodies–Phases and Life Cycles.” In it, blogger “mommymystic” describes the phases of a woman’s life from a yoga point of view. She includes motherhood but also discusses the role of the mature childfree woman. ” . . . In many religous traditions, a woman’s spiritual worth seems to be equated with motherhood. Those who put this forth seem to be forgetting that most of the better known mystics in all religious traditions, male or female, have not had families . . . ”

Read the whole post and be inspired.