![\"Empty](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2016\/05\/Empty-Swingset-300x225.jpg\")
Early one recent morning, I\u2019m still half-asleep. The cat lies curled up between Craig and me, and when my leg moves against her, she snarls.<\/p>\nEarly one recent morning, I\u2019m still half-asleep. The cat lies curled up between Craig and me, and when my leg moves against her, she snarls.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, now, little one,\u201d he says, bending his face down to her and scratching her softly behind the neck. \u201cThat\u2019s not the way to act, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n
In my sleepy state, I hear him talking to a child, our child. \u201cYou would\u2019ve made such a good father,\u201d I think as I fall back to sleep, drowsy logic catching on my use of the conditional.<\/p>\n
A year ago, when we went to our first session of church-mandated premarital counseling, the therapist advised us to discuss the two most-cited sources of marital discord: money and children\u2014\u201cor child-rearing,\u201d she qualified, glancing at the information sheet.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo either of you have children from a previous relationship?\u201d We shook our heads. \u201cAre you two thinking about having children?\u201d She glanced at the form again, at the space in which I\u2019d written my age, and quickly added, \u201ceither your own or adopting?\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, a few months after our wedding, Craig and I attended a baptism. The priest had just asked the parents why they\u2019d brought their babies to the altar. \u201cTo be accepted into the body of Christ,\u201d they answered.<\/p>\n
I choked up. Partly because of the struggle the parents went through to bring those babies into the world; also because the ancient sacrament never fails to move me. As many times as I\u2019d heard the Rite of Baptism performed from the Book of Common Prayer<\/em>, that Saturday, I was <\/em>listening for the first time\u2014to words not from the BCP but from a blue pamphlet handed out beforehand in this Catholic parish run by the Salesians.<\/p>\n Later, on our walk home, Craig said, \u201cI wish we\u2019d met ten years earlier, especially on a day like today.\u201d<\/p>\n I knew what he meant. A day when we\u2019d witnessed babies being baptized. If we\u2019d met ten years earlier, we probably would\u2019ve been able to have children of our own, watched trickles of holy water run down their soft scalps as they were accepted into the body of Christ.<\/p>\n Those days have passed us by. I no longer try to pretend otherwise. But occasionally, as at that baptism, I find myself facing what feels less like acceptance and more like a choice not to think too much about it.<\/p>\n Every night for months, I\u2019ve pushed a small green-yellow tablet through its blister. Yes, I\u2019m fifty, but as the tough-voiced receptionist at my gynecologist\u2019s office told me before I went on the low-dose birth-control pill, \u201cIf you still get your period, you can get pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n The advice was straight out of seventh-grade sex education but I\u2019d wanted to believe otherwise.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you doing for birth control?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n \u201cNothing,\u201d I admitted.<\/p>\n Her voice got even more businesslike. \u201cWell, first thing you do, is come in and take a pregnancy test.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI really don\u2019t think I\u2019m pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen was your last period?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMonths ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Silence, and I heard my voice through her ears. Did I really sound so irresponsible, so in denial? I\u2019ve always considered myself responsible and no-nonsense on matters of contraception, not someone to take a chance. So what was going on here?<\/p>\n I was almost the same age as the Oldest Woman to Give Birth listed in my 1971 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records<\/em>. (Now, of course, we\u2019d have to add a footnote\u2014to give birth to a baby conceived with her own eggs and fertilized and gestated in her own womb.) I\u2019d met the man I would marry. And I was imagining myself in maternity wear, the colors to paint a nursery, what we\u2019d do about kindergarten.<\/p>\n I\u2019d assumed that the odds of conceiving were nil\u2014but of course they weren\u2019t. Small, but not nil. And suddenly, that tiny percentage bloomed a myriad of possibilities, both giddy and troubling.<\/p>\n What if I did conceive, after all\u2014at my age, well, what then? I couldn\u2019t cite the exact odds on chromosomal abnormalities in babies born to women over forty-five, but I had a general idea they didn\u2019t fall in my favor.<\/p>\n And then what? Some decisions I never wanted to have to make. And yet, by not taking any precautions, I had <\/em>made a decision, hadn\u2019t I? And, later, by going on the pill, I made another.<\/p>\n We, I should say. I didn\u2019t make those decisions alone. One night, we went back and forth:<\/p>\n \u201cI can barely run with my bad hip. Will I be able to play catch with my kid when I\u2019m sixty-five?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you like Elizabeth Ellen as a girl\u2019s name?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll be seventy-seven when he\u2019s twenty-one.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe? Who said it would be a boy?\u201d<\/p>\n Etc.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve accepted the fact we won\u2019t have children, either our own or adopted. We\u2019re OK with it. The topic didn\u2019t take up a whole lot of counseling, premarital or otherwise. But every day, one way or another, we mourn our childlessness. Not always consciously, and not always strongly. Sometimes it\u2019s relief at having flexibility in our schedules, more time for each other. But whenever we pass babies on the street, we catch each other\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n Sometimes one of us says something. Yes, it\u2019s too bad we didn\u2019t meet ten years earlier\u2014but isn\u2019t it good we didn\u2019t meet ten years later?<\/p>\n And other times, we just squeeze hands.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This post was originally published on June 15, 2012 with the title \u201cIn Another Life.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Image above is by David K., licensed by Creative Commons.<\/p>\n
![\"GL](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2015\/09\/GL-banner-1024x279.jpg\")
<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"