Mother's Day 20/20

I wake up too early, and before I even stir I am choked by dread of how today will make me feel. I lie still and stare at the loquats outside my window. The giant tree is fruiting again, something it does every other year. Mother’s Day, on the other hand, is tormentingly annual. 

I imagine other women around the world eating poorly prepared breakfasts in bed. When I emerge from under the covers, I will feed myself something (if I’m honest, it will probably be a cookie), and then I will retreat from most of the things that normally connect me to others. Unwilling to scroll through all the perfect family photos, I will unplug and burrow deeper into my life that has not turned out how I planned. I will stare at fruit that is ripe but out of reach. 

I did not expect to be, at age 41, childless. In my life’s blueprint, my children would by now be practicing the piano and learning to ride bikes. They would be smart, musical, kind, named after beloved relatives. I expected motherhood to emerge naturally in my life (after I had all my degrees, of course) and assume its rightful place as part of my identity. I would be a cool, professional mom who impressed everyone by balancing it all.

The first time I saw these little orange orbs on the tree next door, I thought they were kumquats. I was knee deep in kumquat recipes before learning my mistake. In fact, loquats and kumquats are not even in the same plant genus: I was trying to cook with fruit that had a totally different shape, size, and taste. As my husband and I watched most of our friends become parents, the realities of infertility were gradually turning us into not-parents, a different species. Our marriage was not forged by nighttime infant care and sleep deprivation. When parents begin comparing milestones and commiserating over potty training, we can only contribute uncomfortable silence.

I have mostly learned over these years how to avoid these types of conversations – and, frankly, certain friends who can’t find anything else to talk about – to spare us all the awkwardness. More importantly, I have worked hard to embrace and accept my life for what it is...and what it is not. Despite all the soul searching, there are still moments that catch me. Not long ago, I found myself trapped in a conversation between friends who were trading notes about their recent experiences in local maternity wards. Paralyzed by an adolescent fear of drawing attention to myself, I tried to disappear into the corner of the couch, invisibly listening to their stories about which hospitals served the best food to mothers rocking newborn babies. I nodded, pinched the corners of my mouth, waited for it to be over.

These moments feel like swallowing glass, and today reawakens all the scars in my throat from nearly a decade of watching my friends walk into a world that never opened for me. All the times – announcements, baby showers, baptisms – when I stuffed down my own pain and jealousy so I could pretend to celebrate others’ joy. All the times not being a mother made me feel lonely with some of my oldest friends and closed off some of the ways I might have made new ones. I can’t rely on playground benches or PTA meetings to make connections, and there are not equivalent places where childless women naturally bump into each other or congregate in solidarity.

Two years ago when this tree was laden with fruit, we were still heavy with grief from losing our old and beloved cats in quick succession. It felt like the deepest unfairness of all that right as we were coming to terms with the reality that we would never have any human offspring, even our cat children had to be taken away. In a short period of time they were both gone, the only creatures who had ever experienced me as a mother.

We lived in sadness and fog for six months, and then things started to bloom again. The tree was full of fruit, and some of it dropped into our yard, so I made an upside-down cake. The next day we went to the humane society, and they handed us a box of their neediest foster kittens. It was all so easy: no one checked our credentials or our anatomy. Fruit fell to the ground. We just had to gather it up.

And then everything was upside-down for awhile in the best sort of way. These very tiny, very sick little creatures needed food and medicine every couple hours. We stumbled out of bed still swimming in sleep to respond to their hungry chirps. We mixed up their special food, cleaned up their messes, washed endless loads of laundry. We came to love them and refused to return them. We named them after fruits that matched their orange fur: Peach, Papaya, and – before I knew what kind of tree we were living with – Kumquat.

I was always tired, always worried, always joyful. I imagined this was similar to what it was like for parents of newborn humans, but I was too afraid to ask my friends, for fear they would unintentionally diminish and second-best my experience, that they would tell me this didn’t really count. Now we have all grown, and the tree is laden again. I am mourning - I will always be mourning at least a little bit - as I gaze up at all that fruit. Some of it is low enough to be picked, and some of it will fall of its own accord, but much of it will go to waste at the top of the tree, never grasped or enjoyed.

Finally I roll over, and here are my boys. They have noticed that I am awake and they have arrived to interrupt my sadness. They are here because it is another morning and they want me to cradle them and coo and rub their soft little chins. They are here because I am their mama, and that is what mothers do.