The Third Reason We Don't Have Children

Fiction


There are three reasons I do not have children.
1) I do not want children.
2) I'm a high school teacher. I've seen the job, and I don't want it.
3) I will explain...

My  husband and I are perfectly happy without kids. We both knew when we got married that we did not want children. Both of our parents are divorced, and neither one of us is exactly stable, mentally. And being artists, we aren't really financially equipped. We also don't want the pressure of being Colorado parents and having to Do The Things. Neither one of us were raised with The Things, and we're natives. My family are all farmers and his dad was an entrepreneur. No rock climbing, rabid skiing, etc. He skiied in high school while stoned, but that's not specific to Colorado, and not something we want to raise our kids with so much.

My family didn't see a ski slope until I was thirteen. 1979.  I borrowed a puffy jacket from a more outdoorsy friend, and my sisters wore their regular knee length winter coats made of knit and fake fur. We looked so Colorado, dude. My sister complained the entire time, and when my mom said "Quit your bellyaching", our German ski instructor stopped with concern. "Does she have a stomach ache?" Classic for my family, not classic Colorado. And a solid reason Not To Have Kids: I Have Sisters.

I have made friends with some of my parents over the years. One is hopelessly in debt for life because her son was was admitted to 72 hour forced psych eval four times in one year. And when they do that, they do it at the closest hospital, not the hospital that takes your insurance.  In addition to the financial toll, the emotional hit she and her husband took was heartbreaking.

Nope. I'm good. I'll buy you beer and listen to you and support you, but you are definitely a poster child for birth control.

Sadly, that is not a unique story. I had one year with four different kids who were put on psych lock down. Six that I knew of were cutters, one had attempted suicide more than once. Their parents looked hollow, shaken, haunted. They could not focus. All they did was worry. Why would I sign up for that? Why would anyone with the same information that I have, reproduce?

I also have seen kids on the other side.I have a coworker who books her kids to the teeth. There is no down time, ever, they are always running from practice to practice to a game to a scheduled, supervised play date to some music lesson for which they have no talent. Dude. They're miserable, and they have no talent for any of The Things you are forcing them into. I'm pretty sure the youngest is actually a talented artist, but there are no art lessons on his agenda.

Back in 2008, my husband and I were considering adoption. We were in our forties, stable financially--as stable as a theatre teacher and accountant can be. We had mutated---mutated or evolved?--from  an actor and a photographer to a teacher and  an accountant in the name of health insurance and retirement. We took a vacation to Kauai and returned home having a conversation about adoption. I have no idea how that transpired, what in the world Kauai had to do with children I cannot put my finger on. But there it was, we were talking: I had friends who had adopted from China and from...well, less fortunate single moms. I don't want to be politically incorrect, let's just say they adopted children who did not possess their same skin tone.

I was also working in a young building, and every other teacher was pregnant for about two years. They weren't pregnant for two years, they are not elephants, but over the course of two years, many teachers became pregnant and gave birth.

We had started the adoption paperwork, ignoring all of the issues we had been citing or years. If we adopted, we were not in danger of creating anyone as screwed up as we were: bonus. And through all types of helicopter, high strung, wound up parents on one end, and at the other end, parents who barely even showed up to raise their kid, and everything in between, we decided that We Could Do This, because I Had Seen It All from All Sides and we wanted to give someone a home who didn't have one.

Then, in September of 2010, one of my former students, someone I had nurtured and fed and walked to counseling and loved and got through high school, committed suicide. He was 21.

We dropped our adoption pursuit. Two weeks later, my husband's company was sold and he lost his job. He spent the next three years as an unemployable MBA.

So, we don't have kids.
Reason Number 3. And four, I suppose.
It's fine.




----------Kryssi Martin 14 May 2017