Only the Sunny Side
My ghost child haunts me less and less these days. They used to be around all the time, but now they only slip their hand in mine in random places. I can go months without seeing them. Sometimes years.
A person delivered old advice she got from Carolyn Hax back at her in her column when Hax was giving advice to a person who was upset that she never had another child. She wrote,
We long for this imaginary alternative past where we focus on the happy details — so it feeds the notion we missed out on something, but in reality, anything could have happened. Who knows what would have been if you’d had that second kid/moved abroad/taken that job? It could have been great; it could have been terrible. Maybe that’s simplistic, but it’s worked for me many times.
A third child could have been wonderful. It could have been terrible. But my brain chooses to only focus on the sunny side. I let the ghost child subtract sometimes in the way any additional small child subtracts as you have to navigate their schedule. (“We couldn’t have done X if we had a baby in tow.”) But I don’t let them subtract with fictional tantrums or marriage stress. The ghost child is perfect.
And maybe I need to do that; to remind myself that it is also detrimental to focus on those happy details. To daydream about a ghost child who never has to prove themselves because I don’t know the story at all. Or if I’m going to daydream, to do it honestly, imagining all the possible versions and not just the hoped-for ones.
4 comments
I’m the opposite – whenever I’m wishing for that second child I never could have, I think of all the extra work he/she would have caused. My life is much easier with 1 child.
We have neighbors who disagreed about whether to have a second child: she wanted a second, he did not. They had a second child, and the little girl was born with congenital abnormalities and is medically fragile. Needless to say, having a child who requires round-the-clock nursing care and multiple surgeries over the course of her childhood has been life-changing for them in a way that they never anticipated.
My sister really wanted a second child, for years, and couldn’t have one. She gave up trying when her son was 7. He’s 13 now, and challenging, and she feels in retrospect that it’s a good thing he’s an only child.
I tell the children about the twins.
“If they had lived,” says my daughter, “there would have been four of us”
“If they had lived,” says my son, “we never would have been born”
My one is almost 7 and I felt ready when he was about 3 to try for another. But I have been unable to do so due to health issues and, as a single parent by choice, the financial aspect of not being able to work full time. I am now grappling with the fact I am about to have surgery on my brain and neck and I may not be able to have another child due to this. I am at the beginning stages of mourning this, but do hope that I will at least be able to have my life and health back after this and have the possibility of stability and another child in the future (but my age is going up of course).