Blogging for Choice : My choice, My life, My motherhood

Thing 1 spent all of last week at home, sick with the flu which got aggravated by his asthma. We spent most of last week as we did for years as homeschoolers : working on different things, watching videos, reading, doing arts & crafts projects, and getting into each others nerves.

I loved every minute of it.

I love being a mom. This is an admission that does not come easy to me. When I was in my 20s I fantasized of becoming a mother after 40. I thought that only after becoming successful as a writer and scholar, only after finding myself and who I really was supposed to be, that I would be ready to be a mother.

Then the condom broke. Twice.

I suspected I was pregnant with Thing 1 on a New Year's Eve because all the champagne I drank tasted funky and I had a hankering for olives. The funky champagne taste was new to me but not the hankering for olives. That had first happened 10 years prior when I first got pregnant.

I lived as fast and furious as any nerd with wild tendencies could. Yeah, I did my work at college but I also partied hard. This was the 1980s after all and sex, drugs and more sex were everywhere --notwithstanding the dawning of the AIDS era.

So in 1986, just as I was about to finish college I got pregnant after a wild night with an on and off boyfriend I had back in Puerto Rico. It was a careless moment in my life, especially after all the years of awesome sex education I got from my sister-in-law who, ironically, is now one-half of a Pentecostal ministry she set up with my stepbrother.

So I knew immediately after that careless night that I had a pretty good chance of being pregnant.

How I wish Plan B had been available then.

When you live fast and wild, you don't notice a lot of things. Conception though, puts all the breaks on your body and it slows it down in more ways than one. New York City in the 1980s smelled different that it does now. So when I started noticing the disgusting installations of frozen dog shit that littered the Park Slope landscape, I suspected something was wrong.

It wasn't until I started craving olives that I knew there was a problem.

You see, olives are a staple of Puerto Rican cooking and I detested olives. Every single olive that appeared in my plate would get swiped to a corner.

Not until the winter of 1988.

So I went to the NYU clinic and from there they referred me to the head Ob/Gyn. When I go to his office, the first thing I notice is a huge greek icon of the Virgin Mary holding a baby Jesus.

Yes, he was Catholic.

I can't remember his name beacuse I am awful with names, but I will never, ever forget the kindness and compassion this man offered to me.

He takes me to the exam room, checks me, runs some tests. When he comes back he looks at me baffled and asks : "Are you Catholic?"

"Yes and no. Grew up catholic and went to catholic school for 12 years, but am not a believer".

"But you've been keeping you're rhythm charts, haven't you?"

"Yes I have. Why do you ask?"

"Well, because it shows. You conceived but you're too early in the process to even try to terminate."

He paused then asked the hard question : "Are you sure you want to do this?"

This was a question that was asked from me by not only the nurse at the NYU clinic but the nurse at a Planned Parenthood clinic I had gone to. At both times I answered, "I don't know." Yet, because I had to wait to see an OB/GYN, I had time to think about it.

I had called the on and off boyfriend about it. His question was simple : "Are you leaving college to come back and have it with me?"

I was taken aback by the question because, in our years of cat and mouse lovemaking, he had never had any urge to really be a couple. Now I was most likely pregnant and had the "hook" to keep him for me. And my answer was the same as the others : "I don't know."

So by the time I had put my feet up on the stirrups at the Catholic OB/GYNs office, I had pondered the question over and over again. It all came to this : "Do I love this man so much that I would be willing to give up my body and my life to have his baby? Do I really want to have him in my life, present or absent, by having his baby?"

I got off the examination table and got dressed.

The doctor looked at me and said : "I cannot perform an abortion because you know in our religion it is a sin. But I can refer you to one of my colleagues who will take great care of you if you so choose to make that decision."

I sat there in the room, getting my things together and I knew what the decision was : I didn't love the on and off boyfriend enough to be the mother of his child.

So by the time I was ready to leave I went back to the doctor.

"I trust you. I respect your decision to not want to be my doctor through this. I'll take your referral".

Without missing a beat he said, "But I am your doctor, that's why I am helping you make the best decision for you. It's your choice."

You can take the girl out of the church but you can't take the church out of the girl. This is one of those moments when I look back and see a guardian angel.

I hugged and kissed him and with tears in my eyes thanked him for his compassion.

He knew I was a student, that I had no support from my parents and had no medical insurance. He made sure I was able to get the best situation for my abortion. He also offered me post-op check ups for free --and this from a man who charge at the time $250 a visit.

It was the Catholic thing to do : Charity, Forgiveness, Compassion.

It's been 21 years since I had an abortion and I don't regret one moment of it eventhough I am crying as I type this.

I have been incredibly lucky to have guardian angels and Samaritans along long road to my life. The choices I have made, good or bad, have been supported by many good people who believed in me, had compassion, loved me and wanted the best for me in whatever way they could offer it.

The on-and-off boyfriend disappeared from my life. I heard he had eventually married a girl that looked like me and had two kids. But a bad boy is a bad boy and his ways lead to somebody murdering in broad daylight over either drugs, a woman or both.

Months after my choice, I met the man who is now the father of my children.

When I became pregnant with Thing 1, we had already been together for 9 years --but at that moment we had broken up over the issue of having kids. We were in that lovers' limbo where you still "kindof sortof" are dating but unnattached.

That's when the condom broke.

The day I saw the blue strip on the home pregnancy test, was dejavu all over again.

I knew I had to ask the same hard question I had asked before : "Do I want this man to be family?"

All during the weekend I lay in a fetal position pondering this same question. Those were the longest 72 hours of my life. Because, if I were to make a choice for motherhood, it would have meant choosing to have his baby even with the prospect of not living with him or even having him disappear from my life.

It was then I knew my life was going to be ok. Because, no matter I knew I wanted to have Mark Napier in my life. I knew that even if we were to part ways at any point in our lifetime, I would never regret being the mother of his kids.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday came and went. He had been away on a conference all weekend and, well, it was the excuse for not talking to each other about the subject.

Sunday night he knocks on the door. I have never had the clarity of mind and calm I had that night. I was at peace with whatever decision he wanted to make.

"Well," he said, "I think ... I guess we're going to have a baby."

And that was that. Twice.

It's been 10 years since we chose to become parents. We married in June of 1997 and our first son was born August of that same year.

I have dreaded and loved every minute of it. There is nothing, I would have changed about being a mommy ... ok, I could have lived without post-partum depression and the extra weight. Yet, as I kissed my kids goodbye this morning, I just thought, "man, how I love being a mom".

I would take a sword or a bullet for my kids anytime. I wouldn't even think twice about it. It's the kind of love that knows no boundaries, that has no exceptions, that asks for nothing in return.

There are days I can still feel them in my womb. There's days I can see their eyes looking up to mine while nursing. I can sometimes hear the echoes of thei crawling, or cooing or screaming a tamtrum out.

I can feel every single day of their lives on my skin, in my bones.

Which is why, when our niece Lydia died, I could and could not imagine the pain my sister-in-law was going through.

The pain is not just emotional. I couldn't imagine the womb-deep pain and sorrow that my sister-in-law was going through. She too loved being a mommy, so much so that still in her sorrow and loss she is a mother. That's hoe much she loved her daughter. Even in death she is still alive.

There is nothing that my kids could ever do that would ever make me stop loving them. They are the reason I wake up in the morning and the last breath I take in before going to sleep.

My children are the reason I write. The reason for my activism.

My children are my oxygen, my sun, my world of endless possibility.

Evan Michael Sabater-Napier and Aidan Gabriel Sabater-Napier are the reasons why, even in the face of the snarkiest of cynicism, there is a part of me that holds on to hope.

They've made me and the world a better place to be in.

It will be 10 years I chose marriage this year.
It will be 10 years I chose parenting this year.
It will be 19 years I chose having a life with the father of my children.

We may not make it to 20 ... who knows.

You see ... I want to choose motherhood for the rest of my life.

I want more children. The father of my children? Not so.

You don't know how many women have told me. "Gurl, just get pregnant."

Yet, just as I would never want any man or any government forcing me to get pregnant against my will, I have had to make the incredibly difficult decision to not get pregnant in order to respect the choice of the man that I am still legally bound to through marriage.

That's the unspeakable truth of the whole choice debate.

If motherhood has taught me anything is that Choice is not just about my body. Choice is about the uncharted life, family, community and world I choose to step into after the choice I make.

Choice is not about just saying "Yes" or "No". Choice is all about the consequences.

In so choosing not to have a child with the father of my children yet standing firm on my choice for future motherhood, I am choosing a life I had not planned for.

Sure, I knew I wanted him in my life for better or worse. I don't regret not one moment of it. My present children are choices we made in community. My future children are choices I am making alone.

Now I have to look into the abyss of motherhood, at the not so tender age of 40, and decide what I am going to do with this choice, where I am going with it and how I am going to get there.

Choice is the unknown that comes after you've picked between Yes and No.

Thanks to Roe v. Wade, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

| | | | |