Thanks to All the Childless Women

On this Mother's Day, I would like to say a big thank you to all the women who have not had children. If you had, the world would be much more crowded and a much uglier place.

For the record, I love being a mom and I love my son. I am very happy I am a mom. And I'm sure a lot of moms out there are happy they're moms too. But that's not the point of this post.

I know it is hard for you sometimes when people ask if you have children or when they wish you a happy Mother's Day, not knowing your situation. I'm sorry too for all the people who have asked you over the years when you're going to have children or why you didn't have children--as if it's any of their business. And I know that this holiday for some of you or sometimes for all of you is as much of a downer as Valentine's Day has so often been for me.

If I were the dictator of the world, I would perhaps allow everyone to have replacement children--that is, two for every couple. Anything beyond that would result in penalties or huge tax disencentives. In fact, I would give women who choose not to have children a tax break for every year they are childless.

If you look at my ex-husband, his new wife, the love of my life, and me, Aaron is the only progeny. So we're at only 25 percent replacement rate.

If there were far fewer people on this planet, so many problems would disappear or be greatly diminished. Pollution, consumption of resources, unemployment, racial and ethnic tension, overcrowding, poverty, illiteracy, starvation and malnutrition, erosion, deforestation, street crime, subjugation of women, child labor, drug and alcohol abuse, spousal and child abuse, and war all stem, at least in part, from too many people sharing too small a space.

So thank you to all the women who have not contributed to these problems by adding more mouths to feed.

What a Shirtless Man Can Do to Me

Yesterday morning before I left for work at the spa, I rang my neighbors' door to see if they would care to have Rasputin for the day, since Aaron was also working Saturday. It was a little before 9, and the husband answered the door shirtless, in sweat pants, and with rumpled hair. He's good-looking, good guy who is trim, intelligent, and has a sense of humor. After he said yes and we exchanged some pleasantries, I went off to work with a tear in my eye.

It's not my neighbor per se. Sure, he's a great guy, but it's more the overwhelming sadness that I felt seeing him standing there, knowing it's been more than 10 years since I loved a man who really seemed to love me, that it's been that long since I woke up to a man's bare chest. And even more than that, I thought that I'll never have that again in my life. That's really hard to take. That because of my diabetes or my kidney disease or the dialysis or the heart surgery, I'll keep being rejected or not even considered. And of course, once I have the transplant, I'll have so many scars on my body that I'll look like a hacked piece of meat.

As I was doing my first massage of the day, I thought, Once I get the kidney transplant, I'll be free of the dialysis tubing. Then I can get a bunch of tatooes, maybe intersecting vines that connect and cover the bypass scar down my chest, the scar from the vein they took from my right thigh, and the huge gash that comes along with a kidney transplant (for the recipient, not the donor). That made me feel much better. I thought there still might be a chance at love in this lifetime.

Later that day, however, I remembered: With a compromised immune system from taking the immune-suppressant drugs that prevent organ rejection, I will not be able to have tatooes. The possibility of infection from the needles is too great.

So I guess there will always be a reason for a man to reject me. The best I can do is do a much better job of avoiding the countless prompts that might remind me of my aloneness--love songs, couples holding hands or kissing, people talking about nice things their significant other does, groups in which I'm the only single person, any references to or images of sex, and, of course, bare-chested men.