I Wonder if They Call Me That?

I have just had an epiphany. Not the change-your-life kind or the I’m-such-a-genius-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that-before kind, but the stunned, holy-gracious-me-it-just-sunk-in kind.

The Boy and I are a childless couple.

Some stats: he’s 35.5, I’m days away from 31, we’ve been married for 6.42 years (Really? Are you sure? Oh, yep, there it is on the calendar. OK. Right.), we own our home, we have BIG debt, we have a nephew, he has a snowboard, I have a gym membership.

And we’re the ones who don’t have or intend to have kids. Some of our other married friends are in the don’t-have boat also, but I don’t recall knowing that anyone else is also rowing toward planning-not-to-have. Wow. One half of this blog is currently not in the family way or already maternal, but I’m the only quarter not anticipating that ever changing.

I was reading a play—Shining City, by Conor McPherson—and one of the characters says this:
… We’d been slightly left behind, a little bit, you know? All our … all our friends, they, you know, they had families. And, that … that … bound them together, you know?
… Look, that’s what people talk about. Of course they do. It’s perfectly normal to want to talk about the things that are happening in your life. But, you know, that was what we were always sort of on the edge of. You know, those conversations. You know, you’d be trying to, waiting for the subject to change and then of course, some stupid f%$@er would turn around and go, “Do you have any kids, yourself, John?” And I’d be, and I know that happened to Mari too, I’d be like, “Eh, no, no actually, I don’t.” Which’d be then … “Oh! Right! Okay!” You know?

But it didn’t really hit me that in fifteen years, that could be me or The Boy talking. It was, instead, this sweet and honest message on G Love’s other blog:
Childless friends, of which I have many: even though we’re heading down different roads, you will still be a huge priority in our lives. There’s plenty of room for love, of the parental kind and also the friend kind. My babies will be very precious, but they’ll never know what the ‘80s were like. I need you people in my life.

And I realized that she was talking to me. To me and my husband. Holy crap.

So now I walk around wondering if that’s how we’re described as a couple: “childless.” And if we’re pitied by people. Or envied. I wonder if women I see in stores or at restaurants look at me and can tell that I’m not a mommy. I wonder if they wonder if something’s wrong with me—or if they automatically think there is. Because I’m on the back side of five years of marriage and don’t have a kid and another on the way.

At dinner last night, The Boy and I were noticing how much pregnancy/childbearing/parenting was pervading our sphere right now, both personally and entertainment-world-wise. We saw Juno last week (a FANTASTIC film, by the way. Stop reading and go buy a ticket!) and since my epiphany is fresh, I felt like the movie was speaking just to me, directly and conspiratorially. It said, “See? You’re fine. You can watch someone else be ambivalent, even distressed, about being in the family way and you can watch another someone else yearn for motherhood—and you’re still at peace with your choice. You aren’t going to wake up in a cold sweat because your body changed your mind. You are a valuable human being without reproducing. You see the blessings and pitfalls on both sides of the fence from right here on the ‘not’ side where your grass is the perfect shade of green.”

I don’t want you to think this wonder is bitter or defensive or trying to hint that one choice (“-less” as opposed to “with”) is better than another. It’s just … you know … I was wondering.