When I was growing up, my sister used to take me to get UDF (that’s United Dairy Farmers for those of you who didn’t grow up in Ohio) at 3 o’clock in the morning. We’d sit and talk and talk and talk for hours over triple scoops of some heart-stopping flavor (chocolate chip cookie dough, rocky road with extra marshmallows) and a dribbly mound of whipped cream. I idolized her. She was wild; she was strong and fearless and could hold her own with anybody; men loved her, leaving pounds of jellybeans and chocolate on our front porch and offering me vacations for a good word with her; she could laugh like nobody else and she was fiercely loyal and supportive.
I trusted her more than anyone for a long time. Not because I didn’t trust anyone else, but because she was the woman in my life who was closest to my heart, who I’d grown up with (she’s ten years older than me) and who I could fearlessly confide in and rely on to take care of me in a wholly trusting, non-judgmental way.
I hope someday I’ll play the same role for my niece, a blond fireball I call “the munchball” and who’s generally known as “the muscle” for the way she protects her own. Example:
Today, I walked into her day care to drop her off after a day and half of auntie-bonding time, and a little boy came racing up with some folded mess of paper shouting, “I’ve got a venus fly trap! I’ve got a venus fly trap!”
Maria threw herself in front of me and blocked the boy from approaching.
“DON’T YOU GET THAT NEAR MY AUNT SARAH!” she shouted at a pitch that stopped the whole room short.
Needless to say, I was spared the imminent danger of the venus fly trap.
Hopefully, our adventures in chocolate chip pancake making and bike-riding and book-reading and grocery-store sprinting will lead to the type of relationship I had with my sister.
We are three generations of women – 37, 27, and 5. Each of us, thankfully, has grown up with a choice. I cannot imagine what our lives would be like without it. How the lack of that choice would have changed our perceptions of ourselves, our inner compasses orienting us in the world. How it would’ve subjected the three of us – all women determined to throw ourselves into the world with all our might, women sure of our independence, strength, intuition, and intelligence- to another power saying “no, we don’t trust you.” No, you don’t know, and if you get pregnant, we do not trust you to know what to do about it, to feel it out for yourselves. We don’t trust your bodies and minds. You may think you are liberated, but ultimately you are subject to the (predominantly male) state.
My sister spent her twenties, as I’m spending mine, feeling around for the future direction her life would take. I remember her crying on my bed in the middle of the night; remember the cautious, reined-in thrill of her voice describing her future husband; remember her staying up until dawn on a buzz of raw coffee beans and vanilla ice cream, cramming for law school. Remember her jobs, her boyfriends, her friends, and of course, all of our conversations and growth throughout it. She was always, from her most fragile moments to her outrageous boom of a laugh, my image of a woman.
My sister waited to have a baby. Each women decides for herself when, where, and if she will bear children, and my sister reached that decision at age 32. She had my niece the day after I returned from seven months backpacking across South America.
Our relationship has changed since then, molded itself to incorporate this new little sapling coming up into the family. Maria is a force to be reckoned with, a woman who – like my sister and I – will be a presence in this world. When she grows up, I want her to have the choice about when to have a child. I want her to see the choices her mother and I have made and find strength in them. I want her, like me, to have the opportunity to live her twenties exploring the world, venturing out in all directions. I trust her to figure it out, even if she wakes up, like I did one morning at 6 a.m. in Peru on the first day of a cross-continental backpacking trip, with nothing. Even if she hits spells when she has no idea where she’s going or why, even if she makes mistakes and has to start over. Especially in these circumstances, when the choices she make will teach her most, will shape and strengthen her and reaffirm the fact that she is a woman in possession of her destiny.
I look at the women in my life and I see choice – all the vivid, impassioned, careful, colorful, painful, strong, difficult choices that compose women’s lives. Choice, at the end of the day, is what keeps us free, what has allowed us to extricate ourselves from the bonds and obligations of previous cultures and societies. Choice is what allows us to grow, change, and live fully and freely. May we preserve it for generation after generation of women.
One Comment
Dear Sarah, you wrote a heartfelt story about the importance of choice in your life, as well as that of your sisters. However, I’m not sure where abortion fits within that choice. For starts, having a baby requires the contribution of two people–not one. Whether you like it or not, you and your sisters will need a partner (or at least donor sperm) in order to create life, which means you may not have a baby at the time of your choosing (just ask the countless number of women on IVF). A lot of it has to do with luck as it does with individual choice.
Let’s accept as given that men and women are equals, and enter relationships as equal partners. Using your argument that women should be able to choose when to be mothers (and, therefore, when not to be), would you also agree that men also have the right to choose when to be fathers? We are, after all, talking about individual choice and liberty. Yet family law in America and other countries in effect bind men to women who choose to have babies that men do not want. (Conversely, as I myself learned, the law allows women not to have babies that men do want).
One could argue that men accept the risk of becoming a parent when they have sex–but, equally, the same applies when women have sex. (This of course rests on the premise that both parties consented). That said, one could also note that women bear the burden of pregnancy for 9 months, followed by the potential trauma of childbirth — neither of which will men experience. However, men DO experience financial loss (and loss of their liberty) for 18 years and may never even get to see their child.
The only way this devastating issue can be resolved, in my view, is to view sex (and pregnancy) as a joint act with joint responsibilities. The man should have to consent to an abortion to reflect that it was a pregnancy that he helped create (where sex is consensual). Failing this, then, a woman’s choice to give birth should be matched by a man’s choice to be (or not to be) involved in that child’s life.
It is devastating that the creation of life can be relegated to such cold terms, but that’s the way it is in these modern times.
I look forward to your thoughts, Tony
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