2000-05-02
Yesterday on the way home from work I returned Boys Don't Cry to the video store and looked for something new. Renting videos on weeknights is something I rarely do, but I'm in Take It Easy mode (still teetering on the edge of sickness -- or wellness, to be optimistic about it). Besides, I was already there.
On the New rack something called And Baby Makes Two caught my eye. It's an hour-long documentary about a handful of fortyish women in a support group for single mothers by choice. I watched it last night. It spans a few years, from the pregnancy of one woman to the time her son is a couple years old. She'd gotten pregnant the old-fashioned way, with the help of an old boyfriend. Other women go the artificial insemination/sperm donor route, with varying degrees of success, one adopts a baby girl from China.
The women -- one's black, at least one is Jewish, another mentions being Catholic -- are all New Yorkers, and the accents and street and subway scenes made me missing living there. I love New York accents.
Emotions ran high, for the women in the movie and for me as I watched it. Before I met B, I had a strong longing to have a baby. I considered pursuing it on my own, not in any really focused way, more as an option for the future. (We met when I was 33, the clock was ticking but not to a deafening degree.)
Since meeting him the urgency I felt has abated a fair amount. As his overt hostility to the idea has mellowed into a generalized reluctance, I find my own certainty wavering. You know, it's easy to be gung-ho about something when you're with someone dead-set against it.
(An aside: a while back I was friends with a gay guy who was considering adopting a baby with his long-time boyfriend. They met a two guys who'd recently gone through the process. One of them explained, "In any couple, gay or straight, there's usually person who's totally gung-ho about the idea and one who's terrified and hesitant." My friend's boyfriend said, "I'll be the terrified, hesitant one!")
But back to the movie. These women struggled with the prospect of raising fatherless children. Many said their own fathers had played minimal roles in their upbringing; one woman had been extremely close to her father until he died when she was twelve, leaving her devastated. They considered the difference between missing something you've had and never knowing what you're missing. But all of the women in this movie had living mothers. In fact, the mothers played large roles in their lives, both emotionally -- their acceptance of the decisions being very important -- and practically.
One of the most moving moments was in the delivery room; as this one woman gave birth to her son, her mother, who'd been quite judgmental about the situation, shrieked with joy, "I can see his face!!" Her husband, the woman's father, the baby's grandfather, openly sobbed.
It makes me very sad that if I have this experience, my mother will not be part of it.
I'm not sure why I'm feeling this heightened sense of loss about my mother lately. The relentless Mother's Day advertisements are difficult for me this year; she died in 1995 and they haven't affected me this way before.
Planning the wedding was bittersweet for this same reason. She was already on my mind and then the people I was making arrangements with -- the florist, the musical booking agent -- kept referring to the role my mother would play. She was 40 when I was born, and people seem to think I look young for my age, so I suppose the possibility that my mother isn't living doesn't cross people's minds. Still, I'd think that those who work in the wedding industry would have developed a little diplomacy, would have learned that not every bride has a mother in the picture and that the ones who don't might find that lack a source of pain.
Got one other movie: the 1965 documentary Ladies and Gentleman...Mr. Leonard Cohen. I'll let you know how it turns out.
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