I’ve never wanted children. I always cringed at the thought of becoming a mother. Don’t get me wrong…I like kids – some of them, anyway. I enjoy listening to children talk with that wonder and magic that they all have. I like watching children discover things and play. I am not, however, a patient person. I don’t enjoy groups of children, and I don’t enjoy being around children for long periods of time. I’ve never had a desire to have someone call me “Mommy.” I don’t fawn over baby clothes and tiny shoes. I’ve always been too selfish to want to give as much of my life and attention as one has to give when she has a child. I never wanted to be depended on so heavily – to be needed so much for the very life and breath of another person. I guess I just never had that space inside of me that contains parental love. I’ve never felt incomplete at the thought of remaining childless, and I always figured that, maybe, I just wasn’t created for motherhood.

So…I found it rather odd when I started to have dreams about my son.

About two weeks ago, I had the first in a continuing series of dreams about Michael. He is a beautiful little 10 year-old boy and, in the dreams, I have the privilege of being his mother. What is even stranger about these dreams, aside from the fact that I have always vowed to remain childless, is that I can see his little face so clearly in them. I have always had very realistic, sentient dreams, and I see them all in vivid color; but the human faces are usually – if not always – blurred and featureless. Not so in the case of Michael’s face. With Michael, I see every detail. He has my nose (it’s actually my mother’s nose) and mouth. He has, exactly, his father’s eyes. He also has his father’s dark hair and thick eyebrows. There is a little dark brown freckle on the right side of the bridge of his nose, and when he smiles, the edges of his eyes crinkle in 3 places. He has my hands and also my outward personality/temperament.

Michael and I have sat together, sometimes alone and sometimes with his father, doing math homework, putting together jigsaw puzzles, and reading books. He has gone grocery shopping with me, and he once cried bitterly to me over the trauma of learning fractions. He likes to tell jokes, and he pouts when he’s told to go to bed. I have cleaned his bloody nose after he and his dad roughhoused too much in the front yard. I have held him in my arms and told him that he’s growing up too fast. He is a beautiful child; bright, kind, sensitive, and he has a sense of humor exactly like his dad’s. He plays and lives with such enthusiasm and, oh my goodness, with such volume.

These dreams are warm and good. In them, I am overjoyed to be a mother. They’ve actually started to make me think that I should consider changing my mind about the whole anti-parenting gig. What I can’t seem to get my arms around with these dreams is…where did they come from? What part of my mind decided, one night, that I needed this child? What part of me, so deeply hidden from my conscious thought, wants to be a mother? The only thing I can come up with is the topic of today’s rant. Ready? Here we go…

Love is a beautiful thing. No one who has ever truly experienced love would try to deny that. I thought that I knew what love and partnership were about. I really did. I thought that I understood what it took to be with someone. It was all very business-like and it fit perfectly onto a bullet-pointed list of things like respect, friendship, tolerance, and affection. There is something missing from that list, though. It doesn’t matter how many books a person reads about relationships; he won’t find that missing piece. You can’t learn it. You can’t figure it out. It’s not academic in any sense. That missing piece that means the difference between a partnership that works forever and one that does not…well it’s either there or it isn’t.

I always believed, with the strongest kind of belief, that daily effort and dedication to a relationship was all that one required to “make it work.” I had absolute faith in the idea that, with hard work, love could be developed and kept between any two people. I think that the reason I believed this so strongly was that I had never truly held that mysterious missing piece before – that emotion that ties two people together in a way that makes them not only unwilling, but also unable, to live without the other.

We’ve all heard, and perhaps witnessed, the phenomenon that occurs when a long-term marriage ends with one of the two partners dying. Often, the second partner, who was in perfect health, dies suddenly and with no warning very quickly after the loss of the first. We call it “dying of a broken heart.” That second partner just can’t live once the first is gone. There is no reason to continue on without that other person, so they just move on from life – happy to let it go. We smile and sigh at such stories, but do we really understand the love that existed in them? I know, now, that I sure never understood it. Not really.

I didn’t believe that I was ignorant of real love and what it could be. In the years that I lived before Ashley was a part of my life, I felt, like I’m sure most people do, that I knew what love was supposed to be and how it was supposed to feel. I knew what marriage was about and how important lifelong commitments were. I knew about how hard it would be to sacrifice and give of myself to someone else…and I wanted to do that. I wanted to find a man that would love me; I wanted to find a man that I could love and work with to keep and foster a marriage, family, etc. I was pretty sure that I had a solid bead on what was involved in love and in life. I’d seen the movies, read the books, and taken in the advice of my elders. I’d learned about morality, monogamy, and fidelity. I knew what all the words meant, I knew what passion looked like, and I felt confident that I had found the perfect love in my first husband. We were attracted to one another, enthusiastic about the concept of forever, and dedicated to making our marriage “work.”

The marriage did not work. I tried, during the six years that I was married to understand why it wasn’t working. We did all the things that people in love are supposed to do. We went places together. We laughed together. We called each other by affectionate names; we got involved in one another’s hobbies; and we were really good at looking happy, perfect, and in love. We did the work. We did what we were “supposed” to do and, still, it didn’t succeed. It ended. Why? Why didn’t we have what it took to make it? Why did that love, which we worked so hard to keep, die?

The truth, I think, is that we didn’t last forever because we didn’t have that mysterious missing piece.

Sometimes, people refuse to give up – even when it’s clear that the love is gone away or that, perhaps, it was never real to begin with. Some people value the vows that they made and the sacred nature of marriage so very much that they will find more reward in staying where they are than they would be able to find in regaining the freedom to choose again. There would be too much regret for them. It would hurt too much to fail. There is nothing wrong with that belief system. It’s admirable. I understand it. I almost did it, myself. I felt that the honor and merit in persevering would make up for the loneliness that comes from not having that mysterious missing piece. I wanted to win, damn it. I wanted to stay and be dogged and work and work and work…and I was going to. The love was over. It was dead. I knew that. I knew it with certainty. Even though I knew that, I kept going for a long time. So did my husband, I think.

When I met my Ashley, I was drawn to him in a way that I didn’t know people could be drawn together. It was an instantaneous level of connection that I didn’t have any concept of before I met him. We fit. We belong. There is chemistry between us, just like the chemistry that could exist between any two people who find each other attractive. I enjoy the chemistry that I have with Ashley. It’s exciting and it makes my stomach jump with butterflies, but that isn’t where the missing piece comes in. That isn’t why we’re special. There is friendship between us, just like any friendship built on commonalities and mutual affection. Ashley is truly my best friend. There is an understanding between us that rivals even the greatest friendships I’ve ever had, but that isn’t where the missing piece comes in. That isn’t why we’re special. We have communication and respect for boundaries and all of that stuff that people in a relationship together are supposed to strive for. All that stuff is good and necessary for daily harmony. The nuts and bolts of a textbook relationship are in place and being maintained. That’s the work part, and we’re both working hard for one another, but that still isn’t where the missing piece comes in. That isn’t why we’re special.

The love that I share with Ashley Nix will never go away. It won’t fade. It won’t age. It won’t fail.

That’s a really bold statement to make. I realize that. It’s especially bold coming from a woman who’s failed at marriage once and who was, until recently, jaded to the idea of forever between two people. I was jaded. I rejected Ashley as an object of romantic interest for a long time because of it. I spoke to Ashley Nix every, single day for over 6 months. He was my friend, my confidante, and my comfort. I wasn’t about to fall in love again, though. Not me. I’d been through it, seen it fail, and my wounds were still bloody at that time. I no longer believed in the kind of love that lasts forever. I’d done everything I was supposed to do and, yet, I’d failed. I believed, then, that the only way people ever stayed together forever was when they settled and stayed on after the love was dead. I was convinced within myself that all of those marriages that managed to stay intact were just sham-fronted facades. I believed that any marriage that “lasted” was just hiding two miserable people whose happiness came in small doses of pride at being able to say that they had stayed (See, I told you I was jaded.).

I was wrong about that. I’ve seen the forever kind of love between people. You can see it in their eyes when they look at one another. You can see it in the air between them when they’re close to one another. There is an almost visible thread between people that are in love “like that” – people that have that missing piece. Some people out there have it…and that’s why they’re special. That’s why they make it through forever

This love that I have with Ashley is special. How do I know that? Well…to put it simply, we have that mysterious missing piece together. It isn’t just love. It isn’t just compatibility. It isn’t just respect or commitment to doing the work. We belong together. We are right together and we are wrong when we’re apart. The missing piece is really nothing more than a spirit bond. It’s not physical, chemical, or academic. It’s a connection between two people at that place inside each human that separates our species from the rest of the animal kingdom (as far as we know). It’s a recognition that people have for one another on a very basic, but intangible, level. Some people call this sort of coupling “finding a kindred” or “meeting your soulmate.” Ashley and I don’t label it, but either of those would fit.

Love is not the emotion I’m talking about. Love is not the missing piece. I love a lot of people in my life, and I loved my first husband. I’ve loved a lot of people with all my heart, but there are only three people that I’ve shared a spiritual bond with. The first person that I shared that missing piece with was my maternal grandmother. She told me, once, that she and I were made from the same can of fairy dust. We were. We truly were. That light she had inside of her was the same color as my light. People called my relationship with her “special,” because they could see that bond between us. When Nana and I were together…there was no one else in the world. The second person that I found the missing piece with was my friend, Melissa. It was the same thing between us that I had with my Nana. The relationship was a different one, of course, but the bond was of the same kind. We had the same light, the same fairy dust…and people could tell. From day one, we always knew that we were special.

Ashley is the first man that I’ve ever had a bond with like this one. There is a very basic, fundamental part of him that matches that same part of me. When we were together for the first time, those parts of us lit up in recognition of it in the other. We need one another. I’m not talking about codependent need. I don’t need Ashley as a rock or stabilizer. I don’t need him to validate my existence as a woman. Ashley doesn’t need me so that he can say, “I have a wife.” He doesn’t need me to fill out the perfect little home picture and life-success card. We don’t need each other in order to enable our little mental ticks and blocks. We need each other because, now that we’ve recognized our missing piece in one another, we can’t let it go. We have the same light, the same fairy dust…and people can tell.

That’s how I know.

Now…after I sat and thought about all this stuff, I came back to those dreams about my son, Michael. So, yeah, I’m in love and all, but why in the world am I dreaming about children? I still can’t make my conscious self believe that I would ever want to be a mother. The thing is, though; a child, if you want to really get down to it, is the product of love between two people. That’s how it’s supposed to be, anyway. People who desire to have children in a marriage or partnership usually want to have those children because they love one another. They want to raise a child in the midst of all that love. They want to be the caretakers of a life that comes from that love they have for one another – of a life that is “of” them.

Before there was Ashley, I never loved a man so much that I wanted to create a little person with his eyes and my nose. Once again, Ashley has amazed me. I never wanted children. I never wanted to be maternal. I never wanted to be “tied down” with little ones. When I think about it in reference to Ashley, though, the story changes. Don’t get me wrong, there. Man, I am NOT ready to have babies. Ashley and I are not married, and there is no discussion of marriage between us at this time. I’m not ready for that, either. I cannot stress enough that this rant is NOT an essay about how I’m going to start trying to have kids now. Goodness no. I wrote it because I’m blown away by what love is. I’m undone by how big love can be and how simple, basic, and integral it is. Children really are a natural extension of love like that, I think. So…that’s where the Michael dreams come in.

For now, I’m just gratefully basking in the light of this love that I’ve got with Ashley. It’s warm and good and honest. It’s unavoidable, unbreakable, and unstoppable. If being in love this way means that I’ll be forced to have beautiful and comforting dreams about a gorgeous little boy named Michael…hey, I think I can handle that.

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day…so I never have to live without you.”
--Winnie The Pooh

From the Pen of Aspen Lowood
March 7, 2001
10:50am, MST










The text header and accent images were created using a freeware font called, Treefrog.

The text and images on this page were created by and are the exclusive property of Aspen Lowood and Lowood Online. They may not be taken from this site or copied, in whole or in part, without the express permission of the owner. The webmistress may be reached for question or comment at aspenusmc@hotmail.com.