The Woman Without Kids

I met a woman without kids in a suburban Mumbai play area. She was around the same age as me, swimming somewhere in the shallows of midlife, babysitting her two-year-old niece, a female-bodied individual who chose not to reproduce.

“These are the longest two hours of my life. I can’t wait to return my niece to my sister,” she gave an exasperated little laugh.

“I never fantasized about baby names or who the father would be. Not being a mother feels as essentially a part of me as the birthmark on the nape of my neck,” she said with unapologetic candour.

“You know exactly what you want,” I remarked, awestruck and amazed.

“I know exactly what I don’t want. I have zero maternal feelings. I don’t see my life revolving around changing diapers, sleepless nights, feeding, cleaning poop and mollycoddling babies. I don’t have the patience to teach a baby to walk and talk and spend the rest of my life asking them to shut up and sit down. The vocation of child-rearing is not for me. Does that make me an anomaly? Well, the notion that a woman is not complete until she procreates is ridiculous to say the least,” she said nonchalantly.

“In a society where motherhood is upheld as every woman’s natural role, choosing to be childfree must not be an easy decision,” I inquired.

“Neither is the decision to be a mother!”

“At the end of the day, we’re all entitled to make our own decisions. I never go around asking mothers why they had children. So why do I get asked why I don’t have them! People think I am selfish for choosing to be childfree.”

In a house filled with books, potted plants and souvenirs from around the world, the woman without kids lived alone, not lonely. Her neighbours and relatives spoke in hushed tones about how “she never married” and how “she never had children.”

“At 26, people said, “you will change your mind.”

“At 32, they whispered, “there’s still time.”

“At 42, they were flabbergasted, as if something was terribly missing in my life.”

“Even as a little girl, I cradled books instead of dolls. I never felt the tug, that deep-seated desire to become a mother. I was born to capture life’s beauty differently, through words and pictures.”

The woman without kids built a promising career as a wildlife photographer and a writer. She recently spent a month in Masai Mara exploring wildlife reserves and capturing the stunning kaleidoscope of rugged landscapes.

Her world was also filled with words – the kind that lived longer than people. Immortal words that touched lives. Her heart rejoiced at poems and stories, not the first time a baby cooed and babbled, rolled over, crawled or walked. She wrote notes to herself each night – notes that sometimes read like lullabies. She looked forward to meetings with prospective publishers of novels and photographs, not PTA meetings and playdates.

“Mothers have memories of their baby’s first steps; I have memories of the first story I’d published. The first intern I’d mentored and photos of some beautiful tourists and locals I’ve met along the way.”

Her life was rich and fulfilled in ways different yet beautiful.

Not all women need to embrace the same narrative. The path to non-motherhood need not be subject to shame and stigma.

“Legacies are not only biological. I shall leave a rich legacy of words and photographs. A treasure trove of musings and meditations, reflections and ruminations, a legacy not of children, but of stories that will outlive them, words that will sustain them. And that legacy will live on.”

“And I am already whole. I don’t need to create a life to have a meaningful one,” she trailed off.

That woman without kids made me reflect deeply. What struck me most profoundly about her was her honesty and clarity. She honoured her choices, unapologetically. She believed in her quiet strength. She stood her ground. Defiantly childfree! And she looked happy. Complete, even.

Womanhood need not be tethered to motherhood. All women do not have to be mothers. It’s a choice, not a compulsion.

People shouldn’t have to explain themselves, but they do it anyway.

I examine my living room: Toys scattered across the floor. A bus with missing wheels. A cracked yoyo. Baa Baa white crochet sheep smudged with red lipstick. A bunny mobile phone without batteries. Lego bricks digging into my bare feet. A puzzle piece floating in my already cold tea. A sparkling new story book ripped to shreds. Walls stained with markers. Half-eaten pancakes. Cracker crumbs. Peeling wallpaper. A frayed couch. Disheveled shelves. And my little one tugging at my kurti, with crumbs of Play-Doh stuck to her diaper. I linger a little longer. I let it all sink in.

In the middle of the night, I find myself scraping rice out of the crevices of my daughter’s highchair.

“Messy yet magical”, I muse to myself.

I feast my eyes on the crayon drawings taped to the refrigerator. Half-exasperated, half-awed, I smile at the picture of a tree that looks like a green lollipop. Every picture tells a story. Our favourite is the horse my daughter drew on a crumpled Origami sheet last summer. Clumsy yet bold strokes of black and blue made it come alive. The horse’s body, a lopsided oval, its eyes – two pink circles – one bigger than the other, the mane of jagged green lines and a tiny tail curling like a question mark.

“Look what I made”, she’d beamed.

“I love how you used so many colours. I am impressed with your imagination – bold and without boundaries. Makes the picture pop. It is very creative, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” I was effusive in my praise.

As fiercely as I love my daughter, I sometimes miss the woman I used to be. I miss the life I once lived. And I will not shy away from admitting that it is okay to sometimes feel that way. You can love your child deeply and still grieve parts of your former self. I miss the freedom, spontaneity and carefree moments, the lazy mornings, impromptu travel plans, late night walks, coffee dates with my girls, binge watching Netflix, slipping into a pair of skinny jeans, wearing hoop earrings, not having to tie my hair in a bun, indulging in hot food, walking in and out of the house on a whim, stargazing, uninterrupted sleep, but most of all, I miss reading at leisure.

Perambulating merrily from bookstore to bookstore, running my fingers along the covers, tracing the title as though it were a dear friend’s name, breathing in the scent of freshly inked pages that strangely no one ever thought of bottling, the rustle of pages, getting lost and found in the intimate pages of a book, annotating books, the feel of graphite gliding across the page – savouring every moment of the experience, wholeheartedly.

From bookstore aisles to toy store aisles, from bookmarks to crayons, from tote bags to diaper bags, from skinny jeans to elasticated jeans, from The Big Bang Theory to Cocomelon, from Ray Bradbury to Roald Dahl, Ernest Hemingway to Eric Carle, from girlfriend dates to playdates, motherhood has changed my life, bit by bit, nostalgically, magically, tenderly and irreversibly. Once a mother, always a mother!

Missing my old self doesn’t make me any less of a devoted mother. While I do miss the girl I used to be, I can’t help falling in love with the woman I am becoming.

I thought I was here to teach, but she came to show me how to live, how to slow down. In her teeny tiny world, I found my greatest lessons. Every hug, every meltdown, every kiss, every giggle, every sleepless night, every lullaby… a sacred lesson!

What I loved most about my daughter’s artwork was her choice of colours. Like every woman needn’t be a mother, every horse needn’t be a chestnut brown.

It is okay to colour outside the lines.

The next time you’re tempted to ask a childfree woman what happened, why she didn’t, wasn’t she supposed to… Please remember the story about the woman without kids. And don’t forget to smile at my daughter’s black and blue lopsided green maned horse.

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About the Author:

Swati Moheet Agrawal is a mother and a writer who is preoccupied with arranging things in a certain order. Be it her daughter’s toys, books or her own words, her fixation with symmetry and exactness continues. Her work has appeared in Muse India, Setu, Active Muse, The Alipore Post, Sledgehammer Lit, Modern Literature, Indian Periodical, Potato Soup Journal, Rhodora Magazine, Friday Flash Fiction, Ariel Chart, Thimble Lit Mag and The Criterion among other literary magazines and journals.