No bundles of joy - aunt reflects on life without children - column

NO BUNDLES OF JOY

At 43 I am childless. Unless something mind-altering or preternatural happens, I will die childless. The fact that I will go to glory, to hell or into oblivion without leaving one Jennifer or Jeffrey to carry on my legacy causes mixed feelings. I feel simultaneously lucky, cowardly and content.

Luck didn't play a big part in this matter of childbearing. I was never, even in my naive youth, willing to leave pregnancy to chance. I started taking the Pill in college at a time when unmarried women had to get contraceptives from seedy doctors who didn't wear white coats. When the Pill started to affect my health in small, annoying ways, I switched to the archaic alternatives available to the modern American woman. I do feel lucky that those alternatives were always sufficient and that, if they fail in the future, there is still the big A. Of course, if America does away with legal abortion, I will then be thankful that I can afford a plane ticket to someplace more civilized.

There are other signs of good fortune. My stretch marks come from overeating, not from pregnancy. I have not been compelled to change years' worth of malodorous diapers, to endure without relief the domineering behavior of 2-year-olds, or to suffer daily the contempt that is the specialty of many juveniles.

I have to confess that fear was the main reason I never had a baby. Like everybody, I love babies. I just don't think I could survive the mental tortures of motherhood. How do you bear nine months of nightmares about rare birth defects and the guilt after each glass of wine? How do you weather the sinister perils - falls, diseases, college tuition?

Equally frightening have been the fantasies about the kind of children I might have produced, given my flaws and my occasional bad taste in men. When I was feeling optimistic about a man, I would assume that the two of us could produce the most gifted, attractive child in the world. On the bad days, I would realize that it was equally possible to have a kid with my funny-shaped head, big teeth and poor coordination, and with the father's ugly legs and semipsychopathic personality. The odds were intimidating for a woman of faint heart.

Like most cowards, I admire brave people. Mothers, especially volunteer single mothers, are brave people. I never married (that's another story), and I cannot imagine myself alone in an apartment with a helpless little creature whose survival depends solely on me. I also do not have the intestinal fortitude to be the mother of a teenager. That gutsy woman must try to redirect the determined wrongheadedness of a person who is probably taller than she is. One day she may even have to face the ultimate challenge - accepting the fact that she has brought into the world a sorry and irredeemable human being.

Of course, being without children creates other terrors. Who will drive me to the grocery store when I grow too blind, senile and uncoordinated to drive myself? Who will lend me money if I'm reduced to eating cat food - or inherit my fortune if I win the lottery? When I'm gone, will distant relatives or strangers read my private papers and see my raggedy underwear? These are serious questions.

Despite the out-and-out paranoia that has left me without progeny, I am content. I have happily discovered that children are infinitely more attractive when they belong to other people. And the most attractive and satisfying children of all are nieces and nephews. When my 2-year-old niece Zahra recites her ABCs, I can brag outrageously. When she slaps adult admirers, the world blames her mother, Angela. I can showcase my witty nephew, Sekou; my sister Pat can pay for his car accidents. When the cute, intelligent Kelli goes off to college, I can be proud; my sister Jackie can agonize about seductive frat men. I already take some credit for my niece Lisa, who is an attractive, successful woman. I can attribute her flaws to her mother or, better still, to my former brother-in-law.

Still, aunthood has not been without its price. Sometimes Zahra is restless when I babysit; occasionally there are other worries. But being an aunt is to me the perfect relationship with children - one that reaps maximum gain with minimum pain.

COPYRIGHT 1990 Essence Communications, Inc.
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