Someone Else's Dream

I am not a fifteen year old girl living in a remote rural village part. Nor was I part of a generation of women who were sent to college by parents expecting tuition dollars to also result in M-R-S degrees. I no longer participate in any spiritual tradition that advises women are like children, better seen and not heard, preferably kept at home.

Twenty years ago my mother was told “not to worry” about her high school final exams because she was getting married. Her husband, the son of a well known government clerk in Madras, India, would look after everything.

I’m not my mother. I didn’t get married at seventeen, but at twenty seven. I didn’t live in one house until adulthood, shielded from external windows and the passerby on the street, but wearing sleeveless shirts and shorts across three countries on two continents.

Yet, for all our differences, and my generation’s “advances”, I remain plagued by questions of whether or not I’m having, have had, or even want to have, children. I have never been one to back down from a fight – real or perceived – and I certainly do not like being told what to do unless someone is explaining the rules of a new board game.

To be fair, more than just the South Asian element has been badgering me to discover the rationale behind my delay of maternal luminosity. Everyone: white, Latino, Asian, friends, relatives, even strangers, find my intentions of conversational interest. Since my improbable marriage, it has been open season for questions about my maternal predilections.

At twenty seven, a converted Christian, Indian, Ph.D. student, working in the Middle East, I seemed an unlikely candidate to participate in the ethnic ritual of adulthood: marriage. Resigned forever to be a ‘girl’, so introduced as the unmarried cousin at all future family events, I was happy in having chosen my own road.

But then, the miraculous happened. I met someone in the middle of the Arabian desert. Someone who liked adventure and travel – the items my father most objected to in the matrimonial ad they placed for me in INDIA ABROAD – someone who shared Asian respect for family, home, and hard work.

We got married, to the delighted disbelief of both our families.

There was Bhangra, and Lao slow dancing, samosas and egg rolls, toasts and laughter, tears and sighs of relief. And then there were questions.

“You have baby?” Mr. Yong, our taxi driver during a trip to Malaysia, asks while we standing waiting for my husband, who has conveniently escaped to the restroom.

I shake my head and smile. I like Mr. Yong and have had a few chuckles at his expense – I keep mis-remembering his name as Mr. Wong, shaking my head in amazement at his serpentine waist – so my reflexive guard does not immediately pop up.

“Newly married?” he continues. If his smile at my nod to the affirmative is any indication, this seems to be an acceptable reason.

“Anyway, your baby look good when it born. But don’t wait too long.”

Mr. Yong is, I realize, a Chinese man living in the multiethnic island town of Penang. He must understand the world can no longer be split exclusively on racial lines since he is daily surrounded by Muslim Malays, Hindu Indians, and Buddhist Chinese as well as their descendents who have mixed up these combinations.

Therefore Mr. Yong isn’t worried about the obvious discrepancy that my husband is Thai American and I’m South Asian. Oh no. This is an outmoded argument that national identity is paramount in marital harmony. Mr. Yong is worried I might be too old to have a baby.
This man we have known for the entirety of one day is concerned about the viability of my ovaries.

“Why are you so militant?” my friend asks me during one of our quick lunches, as we munch on croissants and samosas outside the mini mart near the university where we both work. We sit on the warm concrete step of the veranda, unable to persuade the proprietor to provide us with chairs.

“Militant?” I repeat, blinking.

“Well yeah. Every time that subject comes up, all I hear is irritation.”

I squint at her in the afternoon sunlight.

“Why is it anyone else’s business? If I lived in a hut in Africa and had no birth control, okay. What is the point of being modern if nothing changes?”

If people can still ask what your “plan” is - as though they are the ones hosting this sentient being with you, changing endless diapers, waiting up all night for the teenager to stumble home - then I wonder what exactly modern society has changed for women.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, “But how do you really feel about kids?”

I had no real answer for her, only more questions. Where will any of the inquisitive well wishers be when the screaming and throwing and “I hate you” or “you’re grounded,” fill my book filled house?

Who will give us a night off so we can remember why we thought starting a family was a good idea?

Mr. Yong? The women in my book club? My colleagues at work? All of whom seem so interested in our fertility at this moment, will they help wipe applesauce out of my hair?

Somehow I cannot conjure enthusiasm to introduce a fragile, needy, utterly innocent being into this kind of world. A world where I am coerced, forced, nagged into having him or her.

A deep suspicion tells me it will not stop at one. One baby is not the point of all this posturing. Especially if the first one is a girl. It will not stop at until it is a boy. The production of male heirs by the women of my family and the men they marry is not an easy recipe for success; my mother had two daughters before her precious son, my sister stopped trying for a boy after her third daughter was born.

My father-in-law waited until we sat down in the Thai restaurant, the oblong menus placed in our hands and the waiter was a distance away, tending to other diners, before turning towards me, his eyes glowing. This was the first time we were all seeing each other after his son had proposed to me.

“When will I get to hold my first grandchild?”

For my father-in-law and everyone else, I have a question of my own: When will any of you be satisfied?

It is impossible to really known your own heart when so many other voices are clamoring in your head. But the hours I've been spending at work make me wish for something more than the ephermal events that come and go; just when one is finished successfully, there's another in two weeks. I want a lasting contribution to the world. Up until now that has been my creative work - writing. But now I'm starting to wonder if it could be the enermous responsibility of another person.