While wandering the mall, I am most instantly drawn to the tiny clothing of boys. The safari style shirts, and little rain coats covered in frogs.
My fingers graze the items on hangers incessantly,longing to hold a little one again.
"Jane...what are you doing?"
I immediately let go and turn in another direction.
"Jane...remember what happened last time!
Baby Blues,
Gaining all that weight...
and surgery...
Oh God, How awful."
"I remember." I say out loud. the lady next to me turns to see who I am speaking too and sees no one. She turns giving me a strange look.
"I remember having one of these before loaning it to a good friend who didn't return it." I smiled at the woman, hoping to clear my moment of insanity.
She smiled back, turning into the next isle.
"Jane do you really want to go down that path again?"
The Librarians were good at keeping me on track in some respects.
This issue I have never teetered on though, until lately.
"Jane, do you really want another teen ager when your 60 -something?"
"Yes, Jane,
and you still haven't lost all that weight from the last one
and it's been 13 years since then."
I was thankful there were no mirrors in the children's section. Everyday at home was a reminder of how I struggle with losing that weight.
A lot of it was being in a relationship where I was unloved,
I constantly hear and re-play the things said to me about how I looked to my husband at the time.
Even though he's gone, the comments linger, they float back to my ears now and again.
"Jane. You don't enjoy parenting...
Why would you want to do it again? With a boy, nonetheless?"
I didn't know how to respond.
for so long I had said in my single parent years, that I wanted 3 or 4 more children..
.....now I find myself wanting none of them.
"What are you going to do, Jane?"
"Yes Jane, What now?"
For the first time in a long time, I did not know what to say or feel. To give the librarians the satisfation of them being right, was mind altering for me.
Mentally, I could not find the way out.
Am I being selfish?
What would my husband say?
Can I not grow old happy with only one adult child?
Years ago, a bus driver with City Transit asked me if I would have more.
He cautioned me to not just have one....for it was too much to have her
clean up the mess of an elder parent who was ill or deceased..
that the duties should be shared by siblings.
"Jane, Just think of the freedom you almost have."
"Jane, She's almost out of the house!"
I turn out of the children's wear and search for purses.
A few years from now I'll have money to burn and nothing to hold it in when I have no children to spend it on.
I better make it a big one!
