Enough

You know, I used to long for a big family. Twenty-three children was not too many. I saw myself barefoot and pregnant for a majority of my married life. I would have been happy to count the number of my monthly cycles on one hand, gestation and breastfeeding filling up the rest of the months. Surrounded by my at least dozen children, I could see myself nursing a baby at the wedding of my oldest child.

I envisioned many things before my husband and I were married.

Seven long years of infertility (87 cycles, if anyone’s counting) and one blessed adoption later, I look back at my hope-filled, starry-eyed self and I grieve a little. Not so much grief for “losing” what I had hoped for, but grief in the realization that what I had hoped for was not, and never will be, intended for me.

There are some women who are called to bear a dozen or more (or fewer) children. But who am I? I was not called to be a twenty-something mother of four kids that look just like their daddy. Am I called to bear any? I am scared that I am not.

Then think of my sweet daughter. My sweet blessing for whom we waited so long and so persistently. We fought for her and we loved her to tears even before we knew she could stay. And I ask myself, isn’t that enough? Isn’t it enough to be given the responsibility of one immortal soul to guide to heaven, to raise just one saint for God’s church?

Because, of course, it is enough. And I tell myself that if I am never granted more children in this life then I am grateful and satisfied and overwhelmed with joy in my one daughter. Would I be satisfied with three, or four? seven, or eleven children to bear, to lose sleep over, to fight with, and to kiss goodnight? If I can’t be at peace with one, why do I think I will be with twenty-three?

And here is a dirty little secret. So much of what I was raised with, so much of my surroundings say “one child is selfish. Only children are spoiled. Oh, that poor kid, to not have any siblings. What were the parents thinking? Big families are just better.” I have spent most of my life defending one camp that to find myself (unintentionally) in another feels like exile. Especially when my “exile” is thoroughly not self-imposed.

I am certain anyone who knows me doesn’t think of my one-child family this way, but it stabs like a knife to hear it in any context. Because no one knows all of anyone’s context.

What if, I think to myself, that mother-of-one over there is just like me, soaking up every bit of joy in her only child because she knows that’s the only child she has, or will ever have? What if her heart aches a little, too, every time she sees a pregnant woman walk by? What if she cries a little every time someone else has a healthy, safe delivery? What if she sighs and turns away every time someone else’s baby asks to nurse? Every time two siblings go home to play, hand in hand?

Of course she dotes on her child–it’s all she has. It’s all I have.

It’s not hopeless. We can adopt again. There are infertility treatments. There are miracles. But I can’t rely on these. I can’t depend on these as I look toward the future. My daughter just woke up. She is here, now. She is all, and I have her, and she needs me.

And that is enough.