How Are The Cats?

<i>How are the cats?</i> they say to me
In the space where <i>How are the kids?</i> should be
As though compelled to obey social pleasantry
But confounded … how to categorise me
When I'm clearly such an anomaly?
<i>Not a mum, not a career girl
What else is there for a woman to be?</i>
So I see them thinking.

Time after time I see people fall
At the how-are-the-kids fence
Like it's the barren elephant in a sterile living room
My supposed heartbreak, a 'fact' that must never be mentioned
A woman my age without children?
Why, it can only mean one thing
<i>Especially when you look at the family history,</i>
They whisper soundlessly, pityingly, thinking I can't hear them
Just because the words aren't spoken aloud.
I observe the delicate verbal tiptoeing
And feel touched and frustrated both at the same time
How I long just to tell them the simple truth:
<i>I don't have kids because I don't want kids.</i>

But I've seen it too many times now:
The surprised look, the puzzled frown
Quickly disguised with polite social smile
Like someone just farted in church.
I've seen, too, the slight pursing of lips, faces hardening,
As though, in exercising my own life choices
I'm somehow criticising theirs.

They peer into the obvious lacuna in my heart
The gaping chasm where maternal feeling should dwell
And retreat dizzy, perturbed
<i>What's wrong with her?</i>
I've been confounding them for many years now:
The absence of wedding sugared-almonds
My failure to ask for 'a little hold',
My utter inability to gurgle into prams,
Coo over tiny fingers and toes.

What I would say to them
Were such a thing possible
Within the fettered constraints of social chit-chat?
<i>Don't pity me because I'm childless
I love the gradual morning wake,
Absent of small people bouncing on bed
I'm happy that my kitchen cupboards
Are replete with Green & Black's, not Cow & Gate
And the lack of Postman Pat and Huggies in my life
Pains me not at all.
In short: I love the freedom I have
To do what I want, when I want, how I want.</i>

I'm told this means I haven't grown up
Am immature, selfish, fail to grasp the point of life
I prefer to think that I'm just … me.
And would they really want me to do it, feeling this way?
Unsure I have enough love inside me
Enough patience, enough selflessness?
Uncertain that this reserved, un-tactile me
Could ever thaw out enough to dispense the hugs,
The kisses, the affection a child deserves?
Might I scar them, cause them to feel unwanted?
The thought turns my blood to acid, makes my stomach pitch
So, you see, I'm <i>not</i> just doing this for me.

Don't pity me because I'm childless
For this is the path I've chosen
This isn't denial, nor smothered heartbreak
Tiptoe no more around my feelings, for I don't need you to
I love my life just the way it is
Am complete, whole, lacking nothing,
So please don't feel sorry for me.
But yes, the cats are very well,
Thank you for asking.

How are the kids? :)
--
8th March, 2010