Forever His Child

I see them everywhere.

Mothers and children, children and mothers.

Mothers picking up children from preschool, hugging them close, reading the notes teachers pinned to little backpacks. Mothers coming to shul every Shabbos at Mussaf’s end, propping little ones up against the mechitzah, peeking and pointing at their fathers davening. Children going food shopping with their mothers, little legs dangling from the wire seats of the shopping carts, babbling innocent high-pitched nonsense that haunts me.

It wasn’t always this way. Mothers and children used to be just another element of the stream of this thing called life. Now they stand out, biting and taunting, making me feel that my childless status whispers to the world, “She’s not part of this world — she’s not a mother.” I see them as if in a silent film, playing and playing, and I want to scream. I want it to stop, but it won’t stop, it never stops.

Yes, I know having children is not always rosy. But I still think it beats having no children at all to pick up from school. It beats slowly walking home after Shabbos davening with no little ones in tow tripping over your feet. It beats placing a Styrofoam carton of eggs and bag of cheese in the shopping cart seat where a child should sit.

What makes it even harder is that I went to preschool with those mothers picking up those little ones. It’s harder still when the number of newlyweds who earnestly show up early to davening every Shabbos morning slowly has trickled down to practically nil. Those same kallos now show up at the end of davening, clutching blue and pink swathed bundles of life. It’s even harder when I bump into my friends at the supermarket with their two expecting number three (but who’s counting?) kids, while no life has ever stirred within me.