Childless by marriage or How I ended up alone

Looking back at another life

Once upon a time I was young, fertile, and aching to be a mom. It didn’t happen. Instead of birthing babies, I birthed a book about not having them.

I’m sharing a similar post at my Childless by Marriage blog today, but it’s relevant here, too, because I might not be alone if I had had children and grandchildren instead of dogs and books.

I have been rereading my book Childless by Marriage book for the first time in years. This is a book about people who never have children because their partners are unable or unwilling to make babies with them. That’s what happened to me—twice.

I’m preparing an audio version through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program. As I listen for mispronunciations, I feel like I’m hearing these stories for the first time.

It’s not my voice. It’s a computerized voice but one that sounds like it could be me or my mom. This robot lady is a good reader. I listen, mesmerized, as she tells of the early years of my marriage, my angst over not having a baby, and my relationships with my stepchildren.

This book came out in 2012, but I started researching and making notes in 1989, which was a very long time ago. I have changed. The world has changed.

Was there really a time when I thought and acted like a mom, when my youngest stepson, Michael, was a huge part of my life? How could I have forgotten?

How could I have forgotten the Christmas my mother and I both had “grandbabies” at the same time?

Did I really share so many personal and sometimes traumatic moments–My multiple experiments with birth control, having sex in the bathroom while the family watched a movie, sobbing at a women’s retreat because I would never be a mother, listening in horror as my stepdaughter told my husband he was a terrible father–I shared all that?

Thank God my parents never read Childless by Marriage.

The book is not just my story. I interviewed many childless women and did tons of research in the days when you could not find it all online. Chapters include information on infertility, birth control, vasectomies, the childfree movement, pets as child substitutes, losing friends when they become parents, and the physical and emotional effects of never having children. But I included a lot my own story. It reads like a memoir in essays.

I was still transitioning from newspaper reporting to writing creative nonfiction in those days. I hired an editor to look at the book. She said she wanted more of my story and less research. So, I changed it. Some of the stories are also included in my newest book, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s. The words are different, and the earlier version came from a different time in my life.

I was so young, still in my 30s, when I started researching childlessness. I was still having periods and still hoping that I would somehow have children. I was also trying hard to develop a motherly relationship with my husband’s kids.

As I reread this book, I miss them. I want to call each of them, hug them, and claim a place in their lives, but we have had no real contact since their father died 14 years ago. Michael visited once so I could show him where Fred was buried. Gretchen is a Facebook friend. Ted . . . nothing.

Fred’s oldest, Ted was livid when he read the first ebook edition of Childless by Marriage. He threatened to sue me if I didn’t take out the things I had written about him. Horrified, I took them out.

Considering what I said about Michael and Gretchen, it’s a wonder all three of them didn’t sue. I didn’t write this book to hurt anyone, just to share how it is when you’re a childless stepmother, but not everyone sees it that way.

The kids are 46, 56, and 59 now. Gretchen is a grandmother. I will never see her grandchildren. I wish I had tried harder to keep in touch, but I didn’t feel like I could. Fred was my connection, and he was gone.

For a while, I was a mom of sorts. Does that mean I’m not childless? Well, the stepchildren stepped away. I never gave birth to my own kids. No one calls me “Mom.”

The closest I get is “Aunt Sue,” which I love.

It’s not a sad book. Portions are funny, and most of it is upbeat. We learn there are many ways to mother and to nurture. I mothered my staff at the newspaper I edited. I mothered my students and the singers in the church choir I directed. I mother my dogs and my plants. l even mother the spiders I capture in a cup and carry out to the lawn. I create books from a thought or a word and turn them into something lasting that I can share with the world. That’s not nothing.

I’m 73, widowed and live in an aging community where everyone has cats and dogs, but we don’t see a lot of babies. My friends’ grandchildren and great-grandchildren live elsewhere, so they’re not in my face. Most of the time, I’m too busy to think about it.

My Childless by Marriage book, the one I honestly thought would make me famous (ha!) is good. I’m relieved. When a writer rereads her old work, sometimes she shudders at what she let get into print. But no, I think it’s relevant and well-done, as beautiful as that six-foot tall, brown-eyed son I might have had, the one who might have called to take me out to lunch on this sunny spring day.

Why am I telling you all this? Not to sell books (well, okay, if you want to buy one, I won’t mind), but to share how our views of things change over the years. You remember crying in the closest over not having babies but forget how you also were free to travel, go to shows, eat at fancy restaurants, and make love in the living room. By not having kids, you were free to be a kid.

Thanks for letting me go off on this side trip. I know many of you are childless, so you might relate to this. I look forward to whatever you have to say.

Meanwhile, thank you so much for so many encouraging comments about my last post, the one about maybe needing a hip replacement. I’m still waiting for an appointment with the expert in Corvallis, but you have made me much less afraid of the whole situation. Friends have already volunteered to take care of me if/when I have surgery. I am so lucky to have you all.