The story of who we are is written in our children – perhaps our own children, perhaps those children in whose lives we appear. Childless, our story ends.
That doesn’t mean that those who have no children are wrong or anything of the sort – it’s just that their histories become static, woven into others’ memories.
For better or for worse, my children are my story. For the rest of their lives, they will carry me with them, alive as they saw me, just as my father is alive with me now, being dead for a few years now… and he is alive in them as well, through what they saw of him, and through what they see of me having seen him.
This is not an urging for you to have children; if you have none, again, no big deal. It’s not sad or anything. It’s just different, and the lives you touch are touched in a different way.
I never thought I’d want to have children, when I was young. Now I can’t imagine living without my sons.
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#1 by Theresa Lombardi on 1 July, 2010 - 10:08 am
Beautifully said.