patience is a finite resource. Fred is ready , you tell them, but I might want to wait a while . You love having Audreyâs baby in your lap, his tiny fingers gripping your thumb, but he is crying soon enough, so you hand him over to Inge, who has no plans for children herself, but who also has a good way with a baby. You fall a bit silent, realizing that if you have a crying baby, your handoff is likely to be at work. In her soft German accent, Inge says Not efryone has to haf babies, Low-is. Dan and I arenât going to. Youâve known this about Inge, but itâs an idea in yourhead that people who donât have babies canât have babies, that if you choose not to have babies, thereâs some extreme reason, like a family history of leprosy or hysteria or who knows what, not that you might simply prefer not to be a parent. At the same time, thereâs a speck of a thought that this doesnât seem quite right: Who decided this? It seems like something that was decided. Inge is one of the most rational, even-tempered people on the planet, capable of making a decision on the basis of her own research or perhaps even her own instincts about whatâs right for her, but why doesnât that seem to apply on this issue, or at least not to you? You donât feel like you have a choice. A part of you loves the idea of having a child. Another part feels like having kids will be a terrible, terrible idea.
Soon enough it happens, and when youâre about three months pregnant, barely showing, you attend another faculty gathering where the director of the local opera company learns that youâre an aspiring singer and invites you to audition for an upcoming oratorio. You havenât been practicing recently, an hour here or there, having gotten caught up in making house and babies, and you tell him so, but he insists that it can be casual. You ask for a couple of weeks, during which you practice âCaro Nomeâ several hours each day, and when it comes time to audition you wear an A-line maternity dress you made just for the occasion (though you still donât really need maternity clothes yet) from a light gray wool that was on sale (you are especially pleased with the sleeves, which are not always easy to line up right with the armholes, sometimes itâs necessary to rip them out several times before you get the seams to match up in a perfect line underneath the arms). The maestro greets you with kisses on both cheeks, even though heâs from Albany. When youâre done, he jumps to his feet, claps, yells Brava! âlaughs with joyâand he is not humoring you because youâre Dr. Craneâs wife, heâs genuinely moved. This is all you. The maestro says he canât wait to introduce you to the world and this is the absolute greatest thing thatâs ever happened in all your twenty-three years.
Who Has No One
N ina is getting married. You are not at all fond of her fiancé, the two main reasons being that heâs not that into getting to know you, and that he takes up most of her available time. Nina hasnât abandoned your plan to be famous authors, marry best friends, live next door to each other, and have kids (who would either be best friends or marry each other); sheâs just followed through, while youâve been held up in a bunch of saloons along the way. Sheâs asked you to be her maid of honor, which as far as you know means walking down the aisle and standing next to her, possibly in a horrible dress. That seems manageable enough, though youâre not looking forward to it. Itâs maybe not so surprising that sheâs getting married before you; Ninaâs an always-has-a-boyfriend type and youâre a wait-for-some-movie-star. Still, a part of you, a big part, feels like this is something sheâs doing to you, or at least something that is happening to you with some sort of cosmic intention. Frankly, this seems emblematic of
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