The first one is at the beginning of the book, when the male main character (Jack) meets someone new soon after the couple moved to Alaska. This is how it goes:
“Your kids all grown and gone?” George asked.
Jack hadn’t seen that coming. He and Mabel were that old, weren’t they, that their children could be grown and having families of their own. He wondered if he looked the way he felt, like someone had stuck out a foot and tripped him.
“Nope. Never had any”
“What’s that? Never had any, you say?”
“Nope.”
He watched George. If you said you didn’t have children, it sounded like a choice, and what kind of craziness would that be? If you said you couldn’t, the conversation turned awkward while they contemplated your manliness or your wife’s health. Jack waited and swallowed.
“That’s one way to go I suppose.”
I love the description the author gave of the character’s train of thought and of people’s reactions when you say you don’t have children. That is EXACTLY how it is!! People’s first response is always a reflection of your alleged choice of not having children. Here in Utah the responses I heard ranged from “married for 5 years and no kids yet . . . that is the way to enjoy life” to “last General Conference there was a great talk on the importance of not delaying bringing children into our homes”. Unfortunately quite often I did not want to open up about infertility because of how painful it was, so I let people think it was a choice even when it had not been a choice for a long time. When I did tell people I was infertile, the conversation became even more uncomfortable as my level of vulnerability increased with their questions about medical treatments or their efforts to give me what felt like shallow reassurance.
The second part of the book that deeply touched me is towards the end as the female character ponders on the reasons why she wanted children so much and why they were unable to find happiness until they “adopted” the little girl:
For years her arms had ached with longing. It was a self-indulgence she often did not permit herself, but sometimes she would sit in a chair, her eyes closed, her arms crossed against her breast, and she would imagine holding a baby there – its trusting warmth against her body, its tiny head smelling of milk and talcum powder, its skin softer than flower petals. She had watched other women with infants and eventually understood what she craved: the boundless permission – no, the absolute necessity – to hold, kiss and stroke this tiny person. Cradling a swaddled infant in their arms, mothers would distractedly touch their lips to their babies’ foreheads. Passing their toddlers in a hall, mothers would tousle their hair or even sweep them up in their arms and kiss them hard along their chins and necks until the children squealed with glee. Where else in life, Mable wondered, could a woman love so openly and with such abandon?
Ok, even though I had not thought of it in these words, reading it felt like I was reading myself. Compared to all relationships I have as a woman, being a mother has allowed me to love more freely and to fully express that love. Thinking back to the most difficult moments of my infertility, some were those when I was nurturing and loving someone else’s child and something happened to remind me that I was not the child’s mother; that I did not have the privilege (or permission) to love that child in that unique manner. It was not about feeling the love because I felt it. It was about not being allowed to own it and to love without restraint. It was about grieving the loss of something I did not have.
I was a bit unsure of what the group discussion about the book would be like, and once more concerned I would be the only one who had experienced infertility. Also, it was difficult to be open given it was my first time there and the book club has been going on for a few years. It turned out to be a great discussion and I was surprised about how women connected differently to the main female character. One woman focused on the difficulty the couple had connecting emotionally, another talked about the feeling of longing for a child as a single person, and someone else was touched by the character’s psychological challenges. By the end of the discussion we agreed that all women can probably relate to this character’s experience because it is full of challenges and rich of emotions. I initially had found it ironic that the issue of infertility was part of the first book we read, but later I felt comforted by the authenticity of the author’s description of infertility and by what I learned in the group discussion. It once more taught me that we need to keep talking about the difficult issues that surround us.
—by Adriane Cavallini
ADSENSE HERE