art instead of babies

If We Don’t Have Kids, What Else Can We Give Our Parents?

Sue Fagalde Lick art instead of babies, childless, no grandchildren, not giving your parents grandchildren , , , , , , , , , ,
Playing for my grandparents in 1990

I’m going to share an embarrassing part of my past today. Maybe you’ll identify with my younger self.

I used to write a lot of songs. I performed and recorded many of them, some for public consumption, some just for me. I was listening to one of my old tapes (yes, cassette tape) from the mid-1980s and came across this song called “Mama Be Proud.” It’s a terrible song. I hope I didn’t play it for anybody else back then.

I wrote it in my early years with Fred, when I was still trying to accept that by marrying him, I would never have children.

My mother was the best. She never nagged me about having grandchildren. She never said, “Why don’t you find someone else?” or “Why don’t you adopt?” or “How could you not give me any grandchildren?” She may have thought those things, but she never said them. She and my dad loved Fred and were happy I had found someone good after the first marriage blew up.

As for Fred’s parents, they already had more grandchildren than they could keep track of, so it was fine with them.

But still, I felt guilty. Raised when I was, I knew the two things I could do to make my parents proud were 1. Find a good husband and 2. Have children. I suppose keeping a clean and orderly house might be number 3. I was trained to be a clone of my mom. I needed to keep the family line going. As for all the other things I was interested in doing, they didn’t really count as much in my family. But those other things were all I had to offer.

Thus I came to write this song in which I begged my mother to accept my music as a replacement for grandchildren.

Here’s the chorus:

I could write you a ballad to comfort your old age,

I could write you a jig to make your heart dance.

I could pass on your name in a hundred sweet songs.

Mama, please love me. Mama, be proud.

Gag, right? Actually the tune is pretty good, but the words make me cringe, both because they’re so smarmy and because I was so needy of my parents’ approval. They didn’t support my music and writing much, but I have to say that on my 50th birthday, my mother made the most beautiful speech about how proud she was of my accomplishments.  

A while later, my cousin dropped my birthday cake in the parking lot. Splat. Isn’t real life fun?

Mom died of cancer three months later. In the end, I think it wasn’t so much that I was letting her down as that she was worried I might end up alone. That’s why she and Dad were so glad when I married Fred. But you can’t know what’s going to happen in the future.

I tell you all this to suggest that maybe I’m not the only one who feels like we’re letting our parents down, like we’re failing to live up to their expectations. The ultimate decision about having children is between us and our partner–and our bodies, but do you sometimes think that if you don’t have kids, you’re blowing it and nothing else you do will be good enough?

Or is it a good thing that I’m about to start seeing a new shrink? 🙂

Let me close with some thoughts from a book that was so gripping I read the whole thing last Saturday. In Flesh & Blood, a memoir about childlessness and a troublesome uterus, author N. West Moss writes on p. 229, “I’ve always felt that I let Grandma Hastings down (in particular) by not having kids because it is the end of not just my own story but of her hard-fought story as well, and of her mother’s and her mother’s . . . . My hope is that writing them down here will cast her line into the future, will be my attempt at securing her story, and possibly mine as well.”

But she concludes toward the end, “I know I’m not technically fertile or anything, but shit, I feel fertile, feel overflowing with ideas and love for the world. I stick a sprig of mint in a glass by the sink and two days later, there are roots reaching an inch into the water. I do the same with a branch of basil from the grocery store. Same thing. Having kids is one kind of fertility, but it’s dawning on me that there’s more than one way to be fruitful.” p. 245

[Trigger warning about this book. If you are planning to have a hysterectomy in the near future, you might not want to read this yet.]

What do you think? Are we letting the family down by not having children? Do we struggle to make up for it in other ways? Please share your comments.

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I’d Be Wishing They Were Dogs

Sue Fagalde Lick art instead of babies, childless by marriage, dog car seat, dogs in baby buggies, Honda, parrot

Do You Want the Dog Honda or the Child Honda?

Honda in Japan is giving childless customers the option of installing a dog crate or a Pekingese-sized glove compartment nook instead of child car-seats. With the childless rate nudging toward one-quarter of the population, the car manufacturer figures if they build it, people will buy it.

Since I have no chance of having a baby at this point,I would. One dog Honda, please.

I recently read an article on Boston.com by Reuter’s Sophie Hardach (“In Dog We Trust: Japan’s Childless Turn to Canines”) about Japanese professional women pushing prams with tiny dogs inside, tiny dogs dressed in little doggie clothes. A surgeon quoted by the author said she was too busy for husbands and children, but she got lonely, so she adopted dogs. Does this not sound like little girls torturing the family dog with bows and doll clothes? Suddenly I think of an old joke where a guy looks into a carriage at a dog in a baby bonnet and says, “That’s the ugliest baby I ever saw.”

Over the years, we’ve all known people who treat their pets like children. Look at my friend Carol, whose parrot Barney runs her life. The other day when we met at the mailbox, she said she had to hurry back in because Barney knew she was home from work. If she dallied outside, he would get angry and poop on her.

On weekends, Carol wears shirts torn by Barney’s talons and teeth and stained by his droppings. Every day she plays music for him, takes him into the shower with her and shares her meals with him. She and her human partner never leave town together because they can’t leave Barney alone. After Barney bit Carol recently, leaving a deep red gouge in her finger, I said if it were me, I’d smack him so hard there would be green feathers flying all over the house. She just smiled and shook her head. “I just told him not to do it again.”

Childless interviewee Bonnie says, “I treat my dogs like children at times. My adoptive mom always said she’d like to come back as one of my dogs. Maybe I treated them better???

It’s probably good that I don’t have kids. I might kill them. One night shortly after we adopted our dog Sadie, I dragged home from work exhausted and hungry, put my dinner on the counter for a minute and turned around to find she had eaten half of it. I whacked her so hard I felt bone against bone. I apologized afterward. Being a dog, she forgot all about it. She’s still trying to cadge my chow 10 years later.

I flash on my Grandma Rachel’s dachsund, Gretchen, whom she referred to as “Gretchie.” She coddled that dog, much to the frustration of my grandfather who preferred the big old mutts that used to keep him company on the ranch. Grandpa’s second wife, Rachel never had children of her own. She was such a terrible cook that her offspring might have starved, and she was more than a little eccentric. I can still hear her reading poetry to us one visit and see her behind the curtains pretending she wasn’t home the next. But she was completely devoted to her dog.

Two generations later, I don’t have children either, but I have Sadie. And yes, she runs my life. If she breathes funny or limps, I’m on the phone with the vet. Every little sneeze or wheeze and I ask, “Are you sick?” Lately she has taken to moaning. I jump down to the floor, asking, “Are you all right?” She eases away from me, annoyed.

“She’s fine. She’s just trying to talk,” my husband says. Typical father. He’s not the one who gets up in the night to let her out. He’s not the one who abandons whatever he’s doing to open a door or feed her a “cookie.” He’s not the one who says, “Sadie’s bored. Let’s go for a walk.”

He’s also not the one who makes faces at the dog to see if she’ll make the same face back. I have gotten her to yawn and to lick her lips. I think I can make her smile, too. Okay, I’m a little nutty like Grandma Rachel. Every generation should have a crazy artistic relative, right? But maybe she shouldn’t reproduce.

When other people call me Sadie’s mom, I say, no, I’m not her mother. Her mother was a canine with four legs and a tail. And yet . . . I know every inch and scar of my dog, but I don’t even know if any of my stepchildren ever had the measles. Furthermore, while other women go gaga when someone brings a baby into the room, I stand off to the side, not sure what to do. Bring in a dog, and I’m all over it. I gush over puppy pictures the way other women melt over baby photos.

Dogs and I connect. We communicate. In fact, I would love to be surrounded by dogs, all rolling around together in a pile. Babies are complicated. Dogs are simple. Eat, sleep, poop, play. They never grow up into something that wears size 13 shoes and decides you’re an idiot.

Good thing I didn’t have kids. I’d be wishing they were dogs.

copyright 2007 Sue Fagalde Lick

"My Art is My Baby"

Sue Fagalde Lick art instead of babies, childless by marriage, Plein Air festival

I’m standing at my book table in Lincoln City, Oregon on a cold, rainy October Saturday. It’s the “Plein Air” festival, expected to be a happy mix of painters painting, sculptors sculpting, musicians playing, and crafters, artists and authors selling their wares, but it’s just miserable. I’m already tired of the MC making wisecracks about enjoying our Oregon weather.
Despite the rain, quite a few people have come, many with toddlers in pink and blue jackets and tiny dogs in little raincoats.
A pretzeled older woman wanders into my skimpy shelter and says she’s trying to think of what to paint. An all-gray canvas? “How about a sea of colorful raincoats?” I suggest. She nods. “I was thinking of that.”
A while later, two younger women wander over to check out my books. The tall dark-haired one says she’s from Latvia. They ask what I’m working on now, and I tell them I’m writing about childless women. They look at each other and grin. “We’re childless,” they say.
“Really,” I say. “Are you childless by choice?”
“Yes,” they chorus.
“About once a year,” says the Latvian lass, “my husband and I ask each other, ‘Should we have a baby?’ and we say no. My art is my baby.” She makes intricately shaped and painted ceramic vases.
“Well, yes,” I agree. “It is hard to be an artist and raise a family.”
“I just have too much else to do. I don’t have time for kids,” says her curly-haired artist friend in the yellow slicker.
“But someday,” I suggest, “you might be lonely.”
Immediately comes the standard answer I have heard at least a hundred times: You can’t count on your children to be around when you get old. They move away. They’re too busy. “Look at my family,” says the Lat, “My mother’s all the way in Latvia. I hardly ever see her.” Then she twists the knife. “What about your momma and daddy?”
“Well, my mom is dead. And my dad lives in California, which is far away.”
“You see!”
And they go back to their art. Yeah, I see. But if I had kids, it would be different. Of course, everyone says that, too.