life’s best plans

I didn’t marry until I was 40 years old, and it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.

My original plan at eight years old was to meet my husband in college, get married right after, and have my first kid at 22 because I didn’t want to be one of those old kindergarten moms. Nothing more happened to my plan than being unprepared for how real life works and being knocked on my butt each time I found out how it does. I dated the wrong men and, sometimes simultaneously, I was the wrong woman to date. My dreams were way too big and my expectations too high. I thought love happened, then I thought love settled on whatever came along.

Sarah Palin’s 15 minutes are nearing their seven-minute mark, aren’t they? Please God. I remember praying the same way about Roseanne Barr and Rosie O’Donnell and, eventually, no one gave a shit about them. So it can happen. Until then, Palin reminds me of how someone in all her imperfection can demand perfection from other people who have differing views or lifestyles. Her teenage daughter has a baby without being married and that’s okay because it shows a pro-life family no matter the circumstance. Palin herself chooses to have a Down Syndrome baby, burnishing her pro-life cred so much, it brightens half the country on a dark winter night. What this woman will not admit: she and her daughter exercised their choices to have these babies. In every pregnancy whether we know it or not, three choices are constant: give birth and keep, give birth and place in an alternative environment, terminate before giving birth. Sometimes, these choices can be tragically made on our behalf.

When I got pregnant with Jordan, I was shocked shocked, but there was no decision to be made after the first three seconds. It was gonna be my baby and me against the world, the biological father’s decision not to participate notwithstanding. Jon Alex was different. I had a special needs 5-year-old whose care took up a lot of my time, and how was I going to give two babies what they needed as a single mom? So I started calling adoption agencies after I made the decision to give birth. I got no return phone calls once they established the race of both the mother and father. No one was interested in a black baby. One of my friends was pregnant at the same time with a biracial baby, and she was beating back adoption agencies with a stick; her phone would not stop ringing. Those stories of childless American couples who claim to cry for weeks about being on a three-year waiting list and break down at the sight of infant carriers? The tears are, apparently, conditional. I kept Jon Alex, and that has been the best difficult decision I’ve made. It’s been harder on a boy with a non-participating biological father, but we are making it work.

So I get married with these two kids and I have a third baby and I also have this long-distance marriage that no one understands. The past year has been one knee-jerk reaction after another, and I feel I am finally settling down enough to take care of my family and my responsibilities. Being laid off for seven months certainly didn’t do anything but trigger my depression, but I’ve got to get a handle on that as well. No matter how I thought life worked when I was a little girl, now that I know differently, it’s time to grow up.

What took you so long?