On Not Being a Mother

Everyone who knows me well knows that I've never wanted to be one. Kids interest me very little. Unless you count college kids, and I find them pretty interesting, which is good, since I have to spend huge chunks of time with them 8 months out of the year. But little kids, not very much. I do get moments, though, of sadness that I didn't have kids. Those moments never happened until I met Scott. We were both 46 when we met, and had we been 36, we might have chosen to try to be parents together. My niece had a baby today. You've never seen a girl who wanted a baby so much. She miscarried on the first try, and this one, Brooke, got to come into the world. I'm thrilled for my niece and like to watch her soak up every speck of this. I'm almost 54 now, and hormones make the no-kids sadness more, what, neon-lit maybe. It really is as though women are biologically meant to have kids, and when we reach the age of no longer being able to get pregnant, it hits us right in the same place it hit cave women who were "barren." I'll go now, and scratch out some more drawings on the wall of the cave.