It takes time to build things…anything really…dreams, bridges, ideals, high-rises…illusions…, but only scant moments to tear them down… . So, anyway, I was needlessly suffering under this terribly misguided notion that I, a childless woman, could actually add - not detract - to society with my enviable (in my opinion) status of being offspring-free. I was at that stage in life where I could easily find myself enthusiastically agreeing with the details of articles with titles such as: Babes without Brats and Running in the Rat Race without Rug-rats or 101 Reasons Why You Should Get Your Tubes Tied (I wonder…could they reopen my appendix scar to gain access to my fallopian tubes? Anyhoo….)

I was way at the top of my career ladder, perfectly satisfied with my lot in life - a job to die for; 2-bedroom condo with a maintenance-free bricked patio; a semi-friendly pet - a black, fluffy cat I named…er…Fluffy in a moment of inebriated inspiration and whom I religiously list on my tax returns as a dependent - a killer Lexus - stately blue, fully-loaded, sunroof, disc breaks…and listed on my tax returns as my other dependent - and…where was I…? Oh yeah, at the top of the food-chain and well satisfied with the view. Whoever had said it was lonely at the top had obviously stayed there way too long. I was a young ‘un, having only just introduced my toes to the unfamiliar waters of the thirties and proving to all who cared to notice that I was a good swimmer. A very good swimmer. An excellent swimmer. There was that time when I declined the Olympic trials only because….uh, yeah, right…so, where was I again…? In my young thirties, happy, single and (yes!) childless. No, amend that to child-free. Much more positive tone to it.

Don’t get me wrong (and please, those of you who light candles at the base of the national PTA monument do not - I repeat, DO NOT - send me hate mail), it’s not that I dislike children. Far from it. I have several cousins on whom I dote with enough sweetness to give me and half of the western world painful cavities. It’s not that I stare down the odd parent who will bring an infant to an R movie and sit there shifting her spawn from breast to breast….I tell ya, there’s something about the Twap! Twap! of a suckling child that kills the general ambiance of a torrid love scene. No, really, have nothing against very young, very short people with cute love-me eyes and smiles that could melt your insides…if you had insides to melt. That’s just the thing. I don’t.

But, have I mentioned my mother yet? No? How remiss.

My mother is your average where-is-my-goddam-grand-baby? Ethiopian mother who smiles with angelic beneficence on all but her still-no-babies? children. All of my accomplishments - three degrees from Ivy League institutes, an awesome career, real estate property before the age of thirty, and a portfolio that would make Greenspan salivate - dwindle to mere insignificance when put under the bright light of my glaring deficiency - a virgin uterus. Well, actually, to be entirely fair, I don’t have three degrees from Ivy League institutes…er, okay, my one and only degree comes from a university that started growing its ivy a mere decade ago. And if I were to tell the truth - that is, nothing but the truth - I’d have to admit that I hate the track my career is riding on currently. And the real estate property…? Well, I’m still saving up for it, okay! And no, I don’t drive a Lexus (good God!)…and ishi, if you must know, I’m a couple of years past thirty. So, while I’m on this truth track, I may as well admit to you that when I said Greenspan would salivate at my portfolio, I think I meant to say that he’d actually spit at it…if it were there to be spit at, that is (Jeez, honesty can really take the wind outta your sails!). Essentially, everything I bragged about in the second paragraph…? Dreams, mere dreams - uh, yes, including Fluffy. But I do have plants, two to be exact (or three, if I get to count my maintenance-free faikus). I have a leafy green gentleman I’ve named Verne and a lovely burgundy thing I’ve named Emily - ishi, beQa, they’re ferenj plants, min libelachu?! Anyway, the idea was to start out gradually. You know, try out my nurturing skills on immobile living things before I let myself graduate to the furry four-legged and then to the bald, two-legged, bawling, feed-me-change-me variety.

So, okay, perhaps my mother has more than a passing right to feel bitter about my lack of…er…uteral achievements. I mean, what have I been doing with my time, anyway, right? Living my life, I argue. Wasting your life, she shoots back. I thought it was damn talented of me to be able to take care of myself, to proclaim undeniable independence. She thought a woman without child has yet to attain her full potential. I sometimes talk about adoption as a very viable option should I ever reach menopause with my uterus having never been occupied by a living being. My mother says, you think someone else’s child would ever be as real as your own? I think that I’m still basically too selfish to stretch myself enough to take care of another human being. My mother has generously offered her services - in the event I should ever be blessed with a fertilized egg.

Well, our simmering-just-below-the-surface differences of opinion nearly came to a blows at a wedding reception one summer evening.

We were seated, it seemed, at a table of grandmothers, all around my mother’s age, give or take dog years. They were all, as my rotten luck would have it, armed with pictures of their off springs’ little rug-rats. One of them even had a pocket-book sized album choke-full of pictures of drooling, toothless, hairless beings eating up the camera lens. They drew them out like guns, with the expertise of gunslingers at the OK Corral, and aimed them with vindictive precision at my mother who, they damn well knew, wasn’t packing a celluloid piece. I avoided, for as long as I possibly could, my mother’s eyes, then briefly casting mine up to the ceiling, I finally turned to face her. Her eyes spoke volumes, veritable novellas of how much she was suffering just then, empty handed at a table full of nattering old grandmothers who had nothing better to do than pull an impromptu show-and-tell of their own little cherubs. I wanted to remind her that we were essentially on the same side and that there absolutely was no need for bloodshed at this table. Think of all the horrible rumors that could burn up the wires on the Ethiopian Grapevine Post - Woman Slays Childless Daughter, Claims Unbearable Envy as Defense; or Injera and w’T Fly in Curious Altercation Over Photos of Naked Babies. Oh, yeah, I could see it now, and my chances of ever marrying into the community for the express purpose of childbearing would go from very slim to none.

So, seriously, what is this need our mothers have to see us with child? It’s not like we’d have the option of round-the-clock nannies to take care of our spawn while we danced the night away, or burned the midnight oil at work to insure a future in the company and a fat portfolio before we retired. For instance, in the ever increasingly remote event I marry and have a child, I would want to stay at home and be the primary care-giver to my very own little…love. But in today’s economy, with our growing need for “a better life” what are the chances of that ever happening? I certainly don’t want to marry for any reason other than love. That might seem rather naïve and over demanding on my part, but there you have it. I come from a very long line of divorced/separated forebears. My own parents went their separate ways before I was out of diapers. I grew up having to endure two separate birthday parties, two separate Christmases, and later, two separate Thanksgiving dinners. If at all possible, I would like to spare my offspring the same double-mint pleasure - whether or not it would ultimately break my mother’s eager heart.

Okay, I admit it…I do want a child! I want to be a mother. So much so that I’ve even given serious thought to the possibility of single-parenthood. I mean, what if I never meet my soul mate? There’s a growing possibility if ever there was one. Either he’s hiding…or….he’s dead. Either way, I’m already thinking of ways to occupy my time as a potentially permanently single, offspring-free female in a world that seems to reward only those who continue to populate our already crowded world. Maybe, I’ll even start a club of my own. Keep a look out for www.babeswithoutbrats.org coming to a search engine near you.