My Mother’s Day this year was a wonderful one. I had a dinner party playdate – three of my Single Mothers by Choice friends and their three children joined my girls and I for dinner and play, under the blue skies and leafy green canopy of my back deck. There is nothing like spending this particular day among women who almost didn’t get to be mothers to make it all the more special.
We all came late to motherhood. An ad exec, a paramedic, a teacher and a writer, ranging in age from 39 to 49. Our children played nearby, ages 6, 5, 4, 3 and 1, giggling hysterically over potty talk and pushing each other in my teardrop canvas swing. We moms talked about our paths to motherhood, the rollercoaster of infertility, the challenges of careers, the joys of motherhood.
We have many blessings, and that gratitude infused the evening with a camaraderie and contentedness that made all the dinner party hustle and bustle – baked pasta and child-led cupcakes – worthwhile. But we discussed one regret: that we didn’t start earlier. That we didn’t make it to motherhood when we were just a little younger, if only so that we had a better chance for a bigger family.
One woman, the ad exec, is happy with her one-child, one-parent ratio, and is comfortable, in her late 40s, with raising just a 6 year old son. But the teacher, in her early 40s, desperately wanted a sibling for her 5 year old boy, but has tried and tried, via IVF, for another, without success. She has all but closed the door on that bigger family. And my closest friend, the paramedic, has decided to push ahead for a second child, even as she turns 50. Her son, now almost 4, was born when she was 45, the product of a sole embryo achieved through IVF. This time around, having failed to conceive again with her own eggs, she has selected an egg donor and hopes to conceive in July.
We all share a belief that our life paths were valuable, and that we became mothers when we did for a reason. We weren’t yet ready in our 20s or 30s, we’re better mothers for our experience. We’re at a place in our lives where we are comfortable in our careers, in our homes, in our families and in our psyches. We make good friends at this age, good mothers, good choices, good children.
But we did spend some time looking at the future, when a 50 year old mother of a newborn might be a 70 year old mother of a high school graduate, and we all wondered together if it was the right thing to do. We worry about our children being left alone before they are ready.
And then we watched our children play, and ate our cupcakes, and enjoyed the companionship of midlife motherhood. None of the children seemed very interested in our talk of longevity and lifespan. There was a swing to play on, and bubbles to blow, and the nearby love of their mothers. For them, it seemed like enough.