Childless, Dreaming, with Motherhood Uncertainties

I'm a almost 39-year old unmarried (gasp!) woman without kids (double gasp!). My biological clock is ticking along, and I just shrug and go about my business. There was a time in my pre-teen to teenager years when I couldn’t imagine my future without marriage and kids. Then again I remember being cornered into taking home economics in 9th grade where we had an assignment to create an equivalent of a wedding Pinterest board and think about our society-acceptable home life; it’s programmed into you. In college, I was a volunteer tutor for the (dilapidated, incompetent) New Orleans school system and realized that some kids are vicious, hurtful, and would cut you down with a single statement (ultimately I don’t blame them; their schools were failing them and not being able to read even at a 1st grade level when you’re 9 will make you lash out in embarrassment). Left a bad taste in my mouth though and may be I felt that it’s just not something I couldn’t handle.

Since then I think have always rode that line of not having an extreme view on whether I wanted to have kids or not. I envy those who are or have been so sure. I do have this very odd preoccupation with baby stuff (tiny clothes and stuff animals are so cute!). But again, don’t have this compulsion to actually have a kid (especially being a single parent). Knowing my luck though I’ll wake up in the middle of the night in a deep sweat at 46 (still unmarried because really, is my “person” even out there?) with a newfangled clarity that yes, I want to have kids! But then my eggs would laugh at poor timing and blow like powdered sugar in the wind.

I had a dream last night. The crux of it was that I found out that my mom died. Before I heard the news I remember that I also just found out that that my aunt Doris (my mother’s brother’s sister whom I lived with along with my uncle and sister growing up; she was like a mother to me) died as well. She actually passed away when I was about 14 so the potential significance stuck with me.

Dream interpretation is fascinating. @refinery29 published an online article at the beginning of the year about death in dreams: “Death of your loved one in your dream indicates that this particular quality that you possess is being transformed in some way.” There is no question to me that the dream has something to do with my views and anxieties on motherhood (dreams of my mom’s death couple with the death of my aunt I considered my mom); I just talked about different aspects of kids in the last week with various friends; undoubtedly it has been on my mind. What do you think? I’m curious to delve into this deeper….

[Photo credit: @cuddleandkind] Love this company; they provide meals for children in need for each hand knit dolls sold. I purchased one for one of my bestie’s little girl as a baby shower gift.