“Contemplating the reality of a child made me feel that the passage of time was also real, that death was not theoretical.” A new Personal History, by Akhil Sharma.
Not long after we began dating, my now wife, Christine, and I started making up stories about the child we might have.
Christine grew up very poor in Dublin. As a child, she experienced periodic bouts of homelessness. When her family was able to get public housing, it was in a neighborhood where heroin was endemic. The family eventually settled in an area where children were regularly attacked by a local pit bull and people would come running with flaming torches, because fire was one of the few things that would make the dog unclench its jaws.
My wife and I began talking about I.V.F. At this point, she was fifty and I was forty-nine. It was usually at night that we discussed it, lying in bed with the white-noise machine roaring. Christine had wanted to have children when she was younger but had surrendered this hope in her late thirties. I had never wanted a child. I think this was because I’d felt I had nothing to offer. My sense that I was worthless had come, in part, from my mother, who I believe is mentally ill .
Along with the overflow of love I was experiencing, another reason I wanted to have a child was that I wanted to make my parents happy. All this is, of course, exhausting. And, of course, every time I try to make my parents happy and fail, it makes me feel foolish for continuing to try. Several times during the next few weeks, I raised the topic of the possible baby with my mother. Each time, she failed to ask any follow-up questions. I finally asked her if she was afraid of the evil eye thwarting our hopes. Though she insists that she isn’t superstitious, she quickly said yes, and fell silent, as if to avoid drawing the attention of bad fortune.
The clinic gave us access to its database of donors. While lying in bed, my wife and I began flicking through photos and videos, reading health and background questionnaires. The questions the women answered included whether they were willing to have their eggs used by same-sex couples and whether they were Jewish.
Christine had similar dreams of dying. She would wake me in the middle of the night and tell me that she was worried about how I would take care of the child if she passed. I responded that I was going to drop off the child at the nearest fire station.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
7 Bizarre Rules That Chick-fil-A Employees Have to Follow — Eat This Not ThatThe chain seems to believe that a clean-cut appearance is at the heart of good customer service—here are some of its rules for employees.
Read more »
Why President Biden Bet on a Senate That No Longer ExistsLast Wednesday evening, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema voted with the Republicans against changing Senate rules to allow passage of voting-rights legislation, crystallizing Biden’s frustrations with the Senate he once revered.
Read more »