I had a cat once. He died about three years ago, my little beast, and he lived with me for 13 years. A destroyer of furniture, a professional scratcher, a bit nasty, sometimes evil, always beautiful and I loved him with all my heart. Now, I’m not comparing a cat to a baby, of course I’m not… I’m comparing him to a teenager… one minute he needed my attention and would give love in return, another he’d scratched me and wanted nothing to do with me anymore.
“Come here boo, come here!” I would tell him, but like a spiteful teenager, he’d reject my motherly love.
What a little asshole he was, and yet, there I was, accommodating my schedule around him, losing money if I ever had to travel so I could arrange for a loving cat sitter, whom he’d always attack by the way, the little piece of … -oh dear, I promised not to curse-. And then there was that one time when my beast got sick and I found him in the closet, only to discover he had a major cut on his neck. I rushed to the vet with him where he got many stitches. When we came back home, I canceled all my plans for the weekend, making sure he had my support and anything he needed.
For weeks, I had to medicate him in the middle of the night. I didn’t hesitate when it was time to wake up at 3 in the morning and feed him with his serum. It took a while for him to allow me to do so. But he was weak and vulnerable and he would fall into my lap, and I enjoyed the connection and the beauty of the moment. I loved my cat so much. When he died I cried like Mary Magdalene at the feet of JesusChrist. A bit much? it’s damn true. I loved that freakin’ cat, and I loved being the mother figure of this creature way more than I liked the concept of giving birth to a real child.
It’s been years trying to figure this out. Is something wrong with me for not wanting children? Surely being a mother is the most beautiful, fulfilling role any woman gets to play. I’ve been told this, my whole existence, by society, by movies, by strangers.
“You don’t want children?” a friend -female filmmaker- once asked me. “I don’t think so” I said, “but then you’re going to stay alone,” she replied.
At this point things weren’t that clear to met yet. I surely expected more understanding from a woman in the arts, yet her comment made me question my entire existential conflict. A recent breakup had me completely torn and the comment came from a person who seemingly had it all… career, husband and children… she appeared to be fulfilled and happy… why couldn’t I do so?
Thank god for Wendy, my beloved childhood friend who knows me well and the most untraditional traditional Dominican woman I’ver ever met. In all her typical honesty, she told me, “Ugh, please!!! let me tell you something, I love my children and I’d do anything for them, but my friend, this shit is hard and it ain’t for everybody, and whoever tells you otherwise is lying, so if you don’t want it, that’s perfectly fine, You go ahead and follow your heart.”
We raised our glasses and toasted for women of every kind.
I like to think that in an overpopulated world, my role is needed. I’m the woman sacrificing -not really- not to have children to compensate for those who have way more than Mother Earth can afford. Some consider this to be right. Some consider it wrong. It all depends on the crystal you see it through, and I see it through my own. “You will never know what love truly is if you don’t have children,” I’ve been told. Sure I do. I have an imperfectly perfect mother and since I don’t get to experience loving a child and what that selfless love is about, let me tell you something trivial, which is how I got my main point of reference of how big a mother’s love is.
I love ice cream, don’t we all? I do love it so much, and if we go and buy ice cream together I’m ok sharing and letting you taste -salted caramel is my fave- just don’t ask me to give you the last bite, right when I’m almost done with it, ’cause it’s the best part.
Now, my mother loves me and my brother so much she would give a kidney for us. I know this mostly ‘cause when we were kids we would eat that ice cream so fast, while she was busy being a mom, so she ate slow, if at all, and once we were done we usually wanted more, and there she was, with her last melting portion of the cone that mixes with the syrup, and it tastes so good, and yes, we asked for it, yet she wouldn’t even blink and would simply give us the tip of that ice cream, and we would eat it without so much of an acknowledgment of what a sacrifice that woman was making for us. Giving up the last portion for her children. I’m eternally grateful to my mother for the tip of her ice cream cone, which literally and symbolically was a statement of pure love.
I admire the strength of women who seem able to do it all. Raise a kid, run a house, keep a job… some women are lucky to have a partner in crime, but let’s be honest, in a patriarchal society, when a man changes a diaper seems it’s something to applaud– who’s applauding these women? I, who don’t want children, am in complete awe. I, who don’t have it in me to have kids, marvel at the impressive ability of mothers to do it all, without sleep, I may add. Mother Nature’s best creation are moms.
I’ve chosen a path of living in which freedom has a price. I am alone, alright. I’ve made a decision that shapes my life, and so have the many women who are mothers, who have a love that’s eternal and unconditional but they’ve chosen an endless journey that makes their lives secondary to their child. Which brings me to the original point of this story. What I meant to confess was that I once had a motherly love for a creature that taught me much about taking care of someone outside of myself. It’s demanding and it’s beautiful, and if this was just a cat, I thought, how much bigger could this love be for a child? How much bigger the responsibility? Too much for me to handle, I guess. The most interesting thing I’ve gotten from the whole experience of being a childless woman by choice, is that I am able to make this decision and still admire a Mother’s role!
This essay is part of a series published every Saturday on Laura Gomez’s instagram.
Photo by Erika Morillo.
