I have always felt like an anomaly. I was a few months shy of 38 when I married. I had my first and only child at 41. After a miscarriage within the first year of marriage, it took three years and the help of artificial insemination, to bring my dear daughter into the world.
Every article or piece of literature I have read, talks about the repercussions of CHOOSING to delay childbirth. When this assumption is made, an entire group of people are left out of the discussion. I would have preferred to marry younger. I would have preferred to have a child before my eggs got old, but it didn't work out that way.
I was raised one of four children. My mother was 18 years old when she married. She had four children between the ages of 20 and 30. Growing up I had a couple of friends that were “only” children. I remember thinking how boring that must be for my friend not to have siblings to play with. I also wondered why a parent would have only one child. I would NEVER do such a thing.
As I became a young woman, my goal was to have three children (four seemed a bit much). And like my mother, I wanted to complete childbirth by age 30. As I finished college, with no suitors waiting in the wings, I was forced to adjust my plan. Maybe I could marry and have two children by the age of 30.
Graduate school and my first jobs followed. Marriage still wasn't in the cards. I would dread greeting relatives and friends of the family. Inevitably they would ask if I was dating anyone. If so, were there wedding bells in the picture?
By my late 20s, I had to acknowledge that the master plan wasn't going to happen. Maybe I could at least marry by age 30.
The big 3-0 came and went. I distinctively remember that birthday. I had been treated to lunch by a friend, but had no plans for the evening. That night I thought about all my naive plans for marriage and family.
I was raised a traditional kind of gal. When I started college in 1974, opportunities for women were just beginning to open up. Even though neither of my parents were college-educated, I was motivated to attend college. But like many young women of that time, besides an education, I assumed college was a place to obtain your M.R.S. Degree. When that didn't happen, I started a career by default.
I had no models or mentors along the way. As I struggled with choosing a major, my mom's only suggestion was that I should become a teacher. I didn't know what my strengths were at that age, but there was one thing I knew for certain; getting up in front of people, of any age, was not my forte.
I worked in university student affairs for 14 years. In my continual attempt to find my way, I relocated to the northeast for a while. After a couple of years, I had proven my independence, but I felt like a fish out of water. I returned to Texas.
After I had long given up my “master plan” and was beginning to think that maybe I would remain single (not that there's anything wrong with that!), I met my husband. And yes, Moms are right about church being a good place to meet someone.
BUT, I didn't choose to delay marriage until almost 40. I didn't choose to wait until my parents were deceased to marry. Although my brother walked me down the aisle, I would have preferred it had been my dad. I didn't choose for my daughter to never meet her maternal grandparents. I didn't choose to have only one child.
When my daughter was around four years old, she began asking why she didn't have a brother or sister. I explained that her mommy was just too old. Well-meaning friends would ask, “don't you want to have another child?” After looking at me, then my daughter, strangers inquired, “Is she your youngest child?”
I am now going through menopause while my daughter enters adolescence. I explain to her that the burst of hormones her body is now producing, the lack of which, is why mom is so bitchy.
Oh, life has certainly been interesting. Like becoming a card-carrying member of AARP when your daughter is excited about having a birthday that puts her in double-digits for the first time. Or attending a PTA meeting to find you are old enough to be the mother of the other parents. And most recently, trying to get fired up about Girl Scout cookie sales.
Yes, I am an older than average mom, who was graced with a beautiful healthy daughter at 41. But please stop assuming that I chose to wait. We are not all given the same choices in life. And sometimes, life doesn't happen in the time frame that we have so carefully laid out. But you seize the moment, no matter how late!
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