Christmas Eve I was standing on the levee watching sparks shower from a raging bonfire turning to embers before my eyes and eavesdropping on two young women talking about how they wanted to have a family and all but figured they'd get a career going first and then worry about kids.
That may be a fine plan for men but it doesn't work the same way for women. There seems little point in wasting your childbearing years on a career you could just as easily pick up at forty and to which you could give your undivided attention once the kids are in college or on their own instead of missing out on their formative years when they need you most.
Certainly an excellent way to counter the empty-nest syndrome.
Women have been duped by the feminists to put the First Things last. That's one reason I posted (and continue to post from time to time) Brother Bernardine's "Four Classes of Women".
It never ceases to amaze me how many guilt-ridden women there are out there. Inevitably, there is shrieking and gnashing of teeth ... as if I'm casting judgment on them for "ending up" begging from Peter to pay Paul as a single mother or choosing work over kids or -- heaven forfend -- ending up a de facto #4 like myself.
The only point in posting it really, is for these women to share it with their daughters. Women need to decide while still young what sort of life they wish to lead ... else they just "end up" some combination of pregnant, married, single or childless.
The sculptor (with whom I basically wasted seven optimum childbearing years) stopped by the porch the other night. During the course of our conversation, we were talking about what a spoiler he was. Strings of women who'd have loved to marry him and have his kids and all of them -- like me -- single and childless instead.
In a moment of charity he reminded me that his brainiac sister had a beautiful, intelligent, gorgeous girl at age 44. All well and good for his sister but I'm not such the flake or so wrapped up in my (non-existent) career that I didn't think about getting married until 40 or impregnated until 44. Plus ... who wants to be 54 on your kid's tenth birthday?
Again, it's one thing if you're a man but quite another if you're a woman ... particularly if you're a woman who has every intention of rearing her own children herself instead of leaving it to the housekeeper, nanny or daycare center.
I don't think increasing your range of fishing coves or the amount of your trolling time is the answer. Quite frankly, at my age (I'm guessing you must be somewhat younger than I), the ratio of freaks and Peter Pans to real men is definitely NOT in our favor. They guys who really wanted to have families do have them already and they're just not out in the bars or giving the gay boys a run for their money on the art circuit. There simply are too many truly frightening scenarios out there as you may know yourself.
I don't wish to assume you're quite as out in left field as I. It's possible you're looking in all the right places. There is this one endearingly loony woman at our firm who informed me the other day that I would probably end up married once I started working at the church. "You're prime material for the Second Wave," she says, "men who got divorced or whose wives have died."
I wasn't sure whether to cry or belt her in the jaw so I just smiled. What can you say? As if some guy fully settled, likely successful, etc. etc. is going to hook up with some middle-aged chick when he could have some nubile thing instead. Silly. Especially if he wants children.
I was talking to my cousin on the beach this summer. Finally divorced from a woman with whom he'd planned on having a family, he's deep into starting up a new company. "I figure the way things are going, I should be ready to have kids in about 5 years so -- for childbearing purposes, I should be dating girls who are 22-25." (Uh-huh ... )
But, technically, he's absolutely right ... though I did take the opportunity to remind him that he was an extremely bright guy and that it might be wise to find someone smarter than he (rotsa ruck with your average co-ed these days). Better to win the hand of someone with whom he was truly in love and wished to spend the rest of his life rather than working it by the numbers from the Age and measurements angle first.
For ... regardless this society's fixation on contraception and "safe sex", the fact is one doesn't always become pregnant at the drop of a hat. Particularly after abusing one's body for a decade or more with human pesticides and other artificial regimens or drugs or habits of one sort or another.
During the family reunion two years ago, Fr. Kenneth Baker and I were talking about these sorts of things and he suggested the Ave Maria site for single Catholics. (Surprised to find out how old I really was, he did caution me that most guys there would be looking for women a little younger for purposes of having kids. Yeah yeah. =) Evidently he knew one or two folks -- including some woman much older than I -- who'd ended up making matches and marrying. There are several sites listed at The Catholic Community Forum, including the Ave Maria site.
I guess one thing I like about it is that it charges such a steep initial membership fee. Nothing wrong with keeping out those who aren't perfectly serious about the endeavor.
Wanting children is just such a serious endeavor. Some jerk on the forum the other day was decrying my pro-life bona fides by castigating me for never having adopted a child or taken in an unwed pregnant girl ... as if single motherhood or hosting unwed mothers were the ticket on my shoestring budget! =)
I'm happy that you too understand how critical is providing kids a father. I cannot fathom the selfishness of women who don't feel their kids need to know, much less live with, their own Dad.
Between some upbraiding of some anonymous woman on Jedigirls' thread (which I took to heart nonetheless) and my running across the fortune-teller excerpt from "The Circus of Dr. Lao" yesterday, I was feeling pretty bummed on just the subject of being a "leftover" woman and having no children ...
Childless you are, and childless you shall remain. Of that suppleness you once commanded in your youth, of that strange simplicity which once attracted a few men to you, neither endures, nor shall you recapture any of them any more. People will talk to you and visit with you out of sentiment or pity, not because you have anything to offer them. Have you ever seen an old cornstalk turning brown, dying, but refusing to fall over, upon which stray birds alight now and then, hardly remarking what it is they perch on? That is you. I cannot fathom your place in life's economy. A living thing should either create or destroy according to its capacity and caprice, but you, you do neither.
But, no sooner had I arrived home in an awful slump of sorts (even the dog was worried), my friend the dulcimer player came knocking on my door ... wanting to please bum one of my cold drip ice coffees, report on his tuning progress and set a date for our next taping session.
As is generally the case with any impromptu knock on the door, two hours later he was still talking and, for whatever reason, he ended up telling me how he's always seen me and -- quite honestly -- I was stunned to think I could give such an impression to someone who's primarily known me only in passing though we've certain circles of friends and acquaintances in common.
Long story short ... it may hurt how unfair life appears to be sometimes but if you don't closet yourself in bitterness or anger or self-pity, it's possible you'll make some sense out of your suffering ... not only get wise but occasionally be blessed to receive the occasional reminder that your suffering's actually born fruit somehow in the lives of others.
There is a collection of essays by some Anglican clergyman among the books my grandmother keeps in her chapel. I was musialing through it late one night and "The Usefulness of Spinsters" essay caught my eye. (I'm probably remembering the title as a little more harsh that is is but it's a book circa WWI and fairly straightforward, if you know what I mean.)
I shall make a copy of it this weekend and maybe post it. I like to use it as a Brechtian slap in the face anytime I'm getting maudlin about all my dumb moves, marriage and kids and the way some folks -- particularly women who abort their children -- practically twist the knife in the hearts of those who can't conceive, who've had miscarriages or who would give anything to have a child or -- at the very least -- given themselves only to the sort of a man who would marry her and would wish to keep any child they did conceive.
Did I say "long story short" and still forget the point? This response is only so long because I want to make certain you don't think I'm offering platitudes without empathy. It's more than the old "just when you quit looking, love will find you" thing ... it's more a prayer that -- regardless whether or not you're blessed with the marriage and children to which you'd give yourself utterly and which would make you happy -- there is always the opportunity to give yourself completely ... to your first and only true Love by ... especially, it seems, by leaving yourself detached and, barring self-absorption, selfless such that you're there to attend to any of His children in need, not just those you or others might consider "yours".
Damned tough being an Order of One these days but there are more of us out there than you know ... wishing like hell we did have some Mother Superior who'd banish us to the Baron's manse to look after his kids and sing songs all day! (Though real life's never works out quite the same as the movies, I know ... =)
I'll keep you in my prayers. Take care.
I have not forgotten that I owe you a reply on that thread. In fact, I think about it quite often. It seems I can't coalesce the ideas that I wish to express, let alone verbalize them.
A quick comment on the two young women you overheard on the levee: It appears that they, like I, have been suckered/brainwashed by the popular culture. I eventually came to my senses, but not before taking several missteps in my effort to "fit in" (as I thought I was the one who was wrong).
I'll leave it at that for now. Further discussion seems to me to be better suited to comfortable seating and appropriate refreshments. That will have to wait until you visit this neck of the woods or I return to your neighborhood.