The last few weeks of school almost killed us. Our schedule was just unbelievable: we woke up so early, had so many events to get to, had to make special treats and arrangements for so many wonderful, unavoidable activities, and had to stay up so late preparing for it all to start again the next day. When, oh when would vacation begin so we could have some free time instead of being jerked around like a pull toy from one activity to the next?
Well, it finally did. Sweet, sweet, summertime, with nothing to do but whatever we wanted. How we enjoyed ourselves!
For about eighteen hours. And then the kids started to go insane with -- not boredom, exactly, but confusion. They were unmoored.
They couldn't believe it was only ten o'clock. Is it lunch time? Why isn't it lunch time? How much longer till lunch time? Can I have a snack? So is it supper time yet? It's not that eating is actually so important to them; it's just that meals gave them an anchor, so they would be able to figure out where they were in the day. These are kids who can entertain themselves pretty well, but they were having a really hard time making the transition from over-scheduled to entirely free.
Finally I figured it out. Without planning anything extra, I just told them each day what to expect. For instance: "You can goof around all morning and watch one movie, and then I will make lunch, and then we will be cleaning in the afternoon, and then we can play poker with Daddy this evening." Or, "I will be working in the morning, so you have to either go outside or in the living room. If you're quiet enough so I can get stuff done, I will take you to the beach after lunch." These plans I described were not actually any different from what we were already doing, but the kids did so much better when they know what to expect.
By now you're thinking, "What does this lady want, a medal? So she tells her kids what they're going to do today -- so big deal!"
You're absolutely right. It's no big deal. Everybody knows that too much formless time, with no expectations, no goals, no limits, can be liberating and enjoyable for a while; but that eventually, we all need to hike up our britches and make a few plans.
Everyone does know this, right? Maybe not. I keep hearing that it's just a conservative myth that women suddenly wake up in their late 30's and realize they forgot to have kids -- and yet I keep hearing about things like this project: the Wonder Clock, which is apparently (plug your ears, Caravaggio) Art.
Mira Kaddoura, who designed the Wonder Clock, tells of the shocking moment when her doctor reminded her that, if she wanted to have kids, she should probably do it sooner, rather than later. The thought had apparently literally never occurred to her before.
"We were raised like we can do it all," she explains. "I was raised very much equal to my brothers; I never thought there was anything differentiating me. [That doctor visit] was the first time anything came up that made me realize, you can't have everything. If you want to have kids one day, you might have to change a few things, or consider it seriously."
So she designed a sort of belt thing, with a digital display that ticks off the years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds of likely fertility that remain to her (you can see her clock ticking here, or get your own app). It's not, of course, a diagnostic or medical tool, since so many factors besides age affect fertility.
Kaddoura told [the Atlantic Wire], "It's not trying to come up with some scientific formula, because there is none." Instead, she hopes to open up the conversation, get people education about the topic, and make more information about it available.
Let's put aside for the moment (in the same way as I put aside, say, a sock that turns out to be disturbingly wet) the question of whether "something that makes people talk" is, by definition, art; and let's ask the more obvious question:
What the heck is she talking about? "Get people education?" "Make more information about it available?" It is somehow secret knowledge that ovaries don't grow back fresh and new each morning like Prometheus' liver? Is it privileged information that women are mortal? I understand that wealthy, aging celebrity moms hide their struggles with infertility while privately paying through the nose for tortuous procedures. But if generations of women truly don't realize that they have a time limit for making new life, then what else must they not understand about their own lives?
Let's not be misled: whether Kaddoura knows it or not, this project isn't about people who are in denial about the limits of fertility. This project is about men and women who don't realize limitations are what make life possible. This is about men and women who don't realize that they will die. Why else would you need to strap on an electronic device to remind you of something you're literally made to remember: that night cometh, when no man works?
Because we can forget. We're distractible creatures -- yanked around by trivialities and worthy causes alike, all of which help us forget that our lives are an arc, a story line, with a beginning, a middle -- and yes, an end. Monks used to keep a human skull on their desks to remind them to get something done while they still have time.
I suppose the Wonder Clock is something along those lines. At least it's a start. But the point of the ever-present skull was to anchor our wills to the present moment -- and at the same time, to turn our hearts to God. It wasn't just a reminder that our time is running out, but a reminder that Time itself is running out: that we're not made for this world, but for the world to come.
The Wonder Clock may be a provocative tool to shake people out of their distracted haze. But why make children at all, if all our lives are simply ticking down toward zero? Making babies isn't just one more thing to check off the list while we still have time. Children are a sign that love brings forth life -- that love will always bring forth life, even after the end of this world.
Remember that you will die. Remember that you will live forever.
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As usual, you have nailed the issue on the head. The reason why such a ridiculous “clock” was invented is that children are now the cool accessory to have for the rich and famous. But, one must be mindful that they have inconvenient needs and thus, plot the best time to accessorize oneself with a cute baby or toddler. Just as it sometimes is a better time to release a film (Christmas) or buy real estate, in this materialistic worldview, there is a better time to add a cute new accessory to one’s life.
Another well articulated slice of truth. Nice work.
“This is about men and women who don’t realize that they will die.” Yep! And when children are seen as an abstract and ill-defined ‘thing that I will maybe do, someday, that will make life better, or something’, it makes sense for us to think that the circumstances of begetting make no real difference and should only be ordered toward the perceived convenience of the parent(s).
Brilliant & forever more I will have an entirely new appreciation for the skull!
For a minute I thought you were going to go in an entirely different direction with this, how boundaries and limits and routine allow us to move more effectively and efficiently in our lives, and then follow it up with a tie-in to the Catholic Church and living in accordance with Her teachings. :) But this is great too!
Ah yes… as an over 40 single woman who until two weeks ago was dating online (I have since quit. no more dating for me - until the pool of men improves) ... and I would have to scoff at the profiles of the men my age…
The options are; want kids, don’t want kids, not sure and someday.
So many men my age would check SOMEDAY ... so I pretty much just skipped those guys. I’m thinking, “Really? you’re forty. At this point, just when is ‘someday’?”
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For the record… I didn’t wake up at 30 thinking I forgot to have kids. I was always pursuing an option for baby making, other than baby making activities with men who weren’t my husband.
At 37, I met what I thought was a nice Catholic man who I could have a family with….. but he was still thinking about SOMEDAY and not NOW or even SOON!
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This contraceptive culture has done just as much damage to men as it has to women!
Some advice to TRS - you don’t need a “pool of men” to improve. You just need one. I’ve had soaked shoulders from my friends crying about the “pool of men” they find on online dating sites. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the vast amount of “not good enough me"ness that you forget when you marry, the rest of the world isn’t “good enough for me”.
I’ve long believed that the main source of fevor behind our age’s fitness/wellness/exercise/organic/vegetarian/safety passions is the unacknowledged assumption that death results from some sort of mistake, and if we do everything exactly completely entirely perfectly it won’t happen to us.
I can’t decide whether a couple decades of aging Boomers buying into this mentality (and, as with everything else they’ve encountered, being convinced that they’ve invented middle- and old age) has been more or less insufferable than what we’ll see when their unavoidable mortality finally sinks in.
This Wonder Clock woman—or other women in similar situations—may be more normal than she appears. She may have thought, “I live in a society where people get married and have babies. If I act reasonably in line with society, then I will get married and have babies.” Society may just be more out of whack than she (or myself in different ways) realized.
...and this is why we have a Borgia saint. If my memory serves me correctly, Frances Borgia was charged with transporting the queen’s body to it’s final resting place in Spain. Her beauty was renowned. He couldn’t restrain his curiosity from lifting the lid of the coffin and peering in, after a couple of days. What he saw, so horrified him, that he could no longer abide by the illusory pomp and circumstance of life at court.
“The last few weeks of school almost killed us. Our schedule was just unbelievable: we woke up so early, had so many events to get to, had to make special treats and arrangements for so many wonderful, unavoidable activities, and had to stay up so late preparing for it all to start again the next day.”
Really, a title like Momento Mori and a drama queen statement like kicking off the piece, I stopped reading.
There’s no doubt in my mind that your mind works much more like a petulant little girl than a woman like our Blessed Mother Mary.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that your mind works much more like a petulant little girl than a woman like our Blessed Mother Mary.”
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Well, that makes two of us, buddy - but I never understood the point of commenting on a piece that you didn’t read. Don’t you have, like, stuff to do?
Great article, yet again.
Something I’ve always been curious about: where did the monks get their skulls?
I’m not trolling; just curious.
@Catheroine Donley - I believe they belonged to other monks. In Rome, there is an entire chapel decorated with the bones and skulls of dead monks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_della_Concezione_dei_Cappuccini
@Catherine, have you ever seen a charnel house?
What a bizarre comment above. Not the product of a large family, clearly, though I’m sure even the Blessed Mother had a busy life with her one child. Such is the nature of motherhood: we don’t loll around all day, with nothing to do but eat Bon-bons!
Wow. John. It’s interesting that I find whenever someone dislikes an article so much on the Register that the author is accused of not having the perfection of Christ or his mother. Matt Warner (I think? wrote about bringing sexy back” and 1flesh and one person quipped, “Do you think St. Joseph and Mary would read these things.. . ?” Um, no because they didn’t engage in marital relations. ) Wow I’m angeir than I thought (tantruming/no napping kids today).
Seriously, that comment sounds so degrading, so degrading- to you and as a woman. (Speaking of dating and mating, those kind of “good catholic” men that look down upon a woman because she is not enough like Mary (in their mind). . .)
Arg, terrible grammar and incomplete sentences. lol. Well i am cooled off now- time to go deal with the stinker kiddos now.
I always tell my husband “I love the truth”,—even when the true colors I am forced to observe shock me. Nothing in my forty-something life, prepared me for some of the things I’ve read in the com boxes from *conservatives*. Forget the trolls, crazies and the angry atheists. It’s the kind of people who use the Catholic faith—the name of the Virgin Mary (!!)—to try to stab others in the heart, which makes me stop and stare.
Please, people. Don’t feed the trolls.
John, I must tell you that Simcha doesn’t deserve that sort of insult. We women relieve frustrations by sharing feelings. Then we get up and keep on truckin,’ as Simcha and the other moms here (including myself) do, through illness, bad weather, competing demands, etc.
Simcha, you are great. Keep it coming!
I love this piece and really needed the reminder today. Thanks for your sensible and erudite writing, Simcha. You’ve been an encouragement to me during the last few years as I started a PhD, had two children, and weathered the consequences with my gracious husband. Deo gratias, we all survived and maybe got a little more humble and a little more holy. Your writing has been one source of support as we try to get it right.
“This is about men and women who don’t realize that they will die.” That line alone made me reflect on something that has bothered me for a few years now. Mortality. First awakened to it in seeing my children growing up and now leaving home (gulp). (When I was young I never thought about aging, I shunned it.) Then in a blink of an eye…poof, were did my 30’s go? A “Peter-Pan” syndrome I guess. Now I am reminded of my own mortality approaching in the graying hair and various accompanying aches. I wonder where I can get a bag of skulls.
I loved this piece! What a bizarre, stupid comment above. Thank you for your inspiration and humor, Simcha!!!
Blog Goliard, btw I liked what you wrote up above. I think what I’m really troubled about, is a bit of an identity crisis of my own…How can I identify with a label, “conservative” anymore based on a troubling amount of evidence that there really *are* a fair amount of wolves in sheep’s clothing on the right? I guess I’m more naive than I thought I was. I’m still ridding myself of some of that “fairy dust” mentality—like if you pray the rosary, you can’t be um…(hard to articulate) evil?
John you are low. Very low. Do you envisage that our Blessed Mother would sanction insults like that?
The other observation about the maternal clock that I think is worth bringing up, is what I call the “ocean analogy”. What I tell older Moms who are speechless at the size of my throng, is that in some ways it is easier to have kids in your twenties. You just plunge in,(the way kids do) false presumptions and all, and nobody expects you to be perfect at it at first. (Are their brain lobes less sensitive to pain??) The older you get, the colder that ocean looks. We don’t *want* our teeth to chatter like insensible kids. Does it feel *colder* when we stick our toe in a decade later? Or is it just that our brain in wired differently as we age, and grow in wisdom? What I do know, is how glad I was to get the learning curve over with in my earlier years. When I was five months pregnant with my first, and celebrating my 21st birthday, I needed to have an emergency appendectomy. *My* parents were beside themselves, and I just assumed everything would be fine. Ah…those were the days.
I don’t know a single childless woman in her 30s who is not well aware of her biological clock. None of us *intentionally* delayed childbearing. Finding men who were ready to be husbands and fathers was a *huge* problem. Now they are either married and hoping for children or still looking.
One thing I find *so* frustrating in that for the most part men in their late 30s and early 40s consider women in their later 30s to be *too old* because we might not be able to have children.
Shocked, shocked, that Simcha does not resemble the Virgin Mary! Although, really, as far as ethnicity, she’s a lot closer than most Catholics, I would think. Thanks, John, for my laugh of the day. Aren’t we all just petulant children in the eyes of the Eternal?
I like this piece, Simcha, I really do. I like how you take an everyday thing and sort of expand upon it to make us aware of deeper meanings.
Thank you, Simcha. When I read what you have written, I do not think of it as a blog, but rather more like a letter from home.
Catholic women, take note: A man who uses the Blessed Mother as the yardstick by which he constantly judges everything you say, do, write, and possess, AND tells you about it freely, even publicly, should be AVOIDED. He is either extremely immature or an overbearing lout.
Kate, ugh you are right. It is a huge problem to find mature men who are ready for marriage and chidren, especially in a lower economic strata. People can object all day with exceptions of the good men in their lives, but let me tell you, we women have really suffered from this culture that doesn’t encourage responsibility in men. It’s heartbreaking.
Okay, John only made one negative comment. I think we can forgive him. We all say stupid things, some - every day. Not that I would know about that LOL.
Simcha, I love the way you begin with a simple little story about your children and then WHAM! MORTALITY!!!
John, you missed everything and it serves you right.
Simca, Thank you for this column - something to think about and appreciate. Even a G-G-Pa nearly 80 can appreciate the comments. Our three daughters each found husbands to love; therefore 12 grandkids. We are grateful - we must have done something right.
Again, thankyou.
TeaPot562
Really fun comments today!
I propose that we all make a firm resolution to always pray by name for the people who express the wish to find good, solid spouses, and perhaps, in the same breath, that *all* spouses would be good and solid!
I like Mom’s thought.
I find myself, through reasons outside of my control, unable to go ahead with wedding plans. And hence, with starting-a-family-plans. I’m in mid-twenties and I struggle with the fear of my biological clock running out - so I guess I have the opposite problem, and read the original article with a great amount of disturbed wonder that women can be that clueless.
I love Mom’s thought. It would be so much nicer than hearing variations on “you will find someone when you aren’t looking” or “you are so wonderful, any man would be nuts not to want you.” People mean very well, but those things just don’t feel helpful.
@Bob Cratchit: I don’t know about a bag, but here’s one option and here’s another.
If this post makes it past the spam filter it’ll amaze me.
@Jenny: Speaking as someone who’s made comments and forum posts that would have me swinging banhammers like mad if you changed the name and posted them to my blog, I have to say you make a good point. I dare say even the best of us has trolled at one time or another. (Not that I’m the best or anywhere close, of course.)
HOT, HOT, HOT: Stop abortions!
Abortion is the greatest holocaust in history
Croatian writer Giancarlo Kravar: “Abortions the most terrible holocaust in history”, said a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church Vsevold Chapin during a protest against abortion in Moscow. “Abortions killed more people than all wars,” explained Chapin. It has been scientifically proven that life begins at conception, and regardless of religious, ideological or any other opinion, the facts are correct! 78.2.89.54 (talk) 11:37, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
Just published on Wikipedia…
Cheers,
Giancarlo
@ J H… I don’t understand what you mean.
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Yes, I’m well aware that I only need ONE MAN. In 20+ years that one guy has not turned up.
Nowadays, when I tell people about the men I’m meeting/dating they say, “Oh, you’re just meeting all the wrong guys!” Um, thank you Captain Obvious!!!
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Until some decent men get in the pool, there’s no point in continuing to date.
It’s not that they’re not “good enough for me” - they’re just not even out there.
Seriously, I met one guy who was an ex-con and who actually thought I was going to go home with him on the first meeting!!!
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If there are decent, datable, marriageable men out there… they need to start waving giant flags that say so.
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.@ kate at 2:33 you said perfectly what I meant to say! Thank you for that.
@Kate, I so see what you are saying, and on the reverse side of things, I have a dear, holy, upright friend in her 20’s who is endlessly pursued by “good” Catholic men in their late 30’s and 40’s who are after her for her ovaries. It is depressing to be her, especially since she can’t seem to attract any younger men, who all seem to be out sewing wild oats, etc.
Yeah, I never understood the whole “career first, children later” thing. Doesn’t make more sense to have the children first, and then pursue a career later, when you will have decades of uninterrupted time after the children are grown?
If you put career first, you end up just getting started in your career and then have to stop to have children (or don’t stop and just have someone else raise your kids, I guess).
But then again, I was never interested in having a career, so I don’t really know how it works. Even though I have multiple college degrees, I only ever wanted to be a stay at home mom (which I am).
By the way, your fertility drops in half around age 37. And it is basically gone by your early forties. I really think a lot of people don’t know this. I saw a woman on Dr Phil who was 51 and said she wanted to have kids before she got too old!
I’m glad to be having kids young. I’m looking forward to enjoying a young and long retirement with my husband.
My heart goes out to all those women who seek marriage and family and can’t seem to find the right man. I can’t imagine the pain you must feel, and will remember you in my prayers.
@ Katheryn… thank you for your compassion.
@ Catherine… It’s kind of hard to have kids if you don’t have a husband. Some of us have careers because we didn’t want to be a waitress or a store clerk until we met the right guy - or for the rest of our lives - whichever comes first.
So as it turns out (and I’m only realizing this in the past 24 months) that there’s a whole world of people out there who think women like me chose a career because we weren’t interested in marriage or family.
Please get rid of that idea. I just wanted to do something interesting and fulfilling until the time came… and then the time never came.
When I graduated from high school (1988) women were told to be able to take care of ourselves and not rely on a man—- and that would make us more attractive when the man came along.
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In reality, it seems, men thought women like me were focused on our careers and found us intimidating (I had a really cool, impressive career) Then when I was 27-28, when I expected/planned to get married… there was no guy! I turned around and all of the women who couldn’t take care of themselves had snagged all the men!!
Talk about discouraging.
I even remember being out with friends in my 20s and the men bragging that their wives had never worked - and my friends and I, who knew how to take care of ourselves thought that was really sad… we thought that those men could easily have affairs and demand divorces and their wives would have no way to take care of themselves, still dependent on men who don’t love them anymore…. or worse… what if he died and she didn’t even know how to fill out a W-2?
I’d really like to know if those poor women are still married.
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Now I see that I should have been a hairdresser and settled for the first guy who came along.
I’m independent out of necessity, not desire.
But I’m also glad I can take care of myself. I just tired of not having a partner.
TRS, I think we all have to be careful with the assumptions we make about people on the other side of the fence. This line:
“I even remember being out with friends in my 20s and the men bragging that their wives had never worked - and my friends and I, who knew how to take care of ourselves thought that was really sad… we thought that those men could easily have affairs and demand divorces and their wives would have no way to take care of themselves, still dependent on men who don’t love them anymore…. or worse… what if he died and she didn’t even know how to fill out a W-2?
I’d really like to know if those poor women are still married.”
could easily be applied to me. I got married at 22, halfway through grad school, and had a baby 9.5 months later. I’ve never had a “real” job in my life. BUT, “being dependent” as you phrase it is not something I chose, any more than you “chose” a career over having children. It’s just what happened in my life and I made the best of it; I was not going to reject the wonderful man I met and fell in love with just because we were in our early 20s. Just as you are independent out of necessity and not desire, I am dependent out of necessity and not desire (somebody had to take care of all these kids!)
I completely agree with your point: people should not assume. That ought to go both ways, though.
Just a word of encouragement to those who worry—I had a baby at 40, 43 and 45. My fertility actually went up after 35 when I put on a few extra pounds. So no, fertility is not nonexistent in the 40s. Especially if women aren’t using false hormones.
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One of my favorite Catholic books is “He and I” by a single Frenchwoman, Gabrielle Bossis. The book was published anonymously while Gabrielle was still alive, as it deals with her very intimate spiritual life. She was a professional woman who traveled around France putting on plays that she wrote and acted in. She has an ongoing conversation with Jesus, that she records in her journals, as she criss-crosses the country, during WWII. The conversations are simply sublime. I love the intimacy of her life with Jesus. HE, is the pearl of great price.
@ Becca, I agree with your point.
Just remember, I was describing thoughts I had when I was in my 20s. Other than saying that I wonder if those women are still married and what happened to them - I didn’t say that I still think way.
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although, I WILL say I will never be impressed by a man who BRAGS that his wife has never worked. I mean… what kind of princess didn’t get a job when she was 16 or 17? And how could that be attractive?
Had a big story about men and women marrying late in our newspaper this past weekend (in their 40’s and 50’s). Some of them were first marriages. I thought it was interesting that the article never mentioned the inability to have children with these late marriages as a “downside”. There was no mention of children at all, but instead, a quote by a family therapist plugging late marriages as more successful. Many of the couples quoted had said they were not looking to marry, but then met someone they did want to marry.
@ Susie….
Speaking as a single, childless woman of 42 - I would think that by the time one reaches 45-50 we have realistically come to terms with the fact that children aren’t likely.
As for myself, I have already spent considerable time grieving the loss of my fertility. (or potential loss, since everyone and their mother wants to point out that I still COULD POSSIBLY have babies, and Captain Obvious likes to point out that I could adopt!)
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Oddly, as I have shared the fact that I have let go of the idea that I really really wanted to fulfill my womanhood by having children… the response I get most is that I shouldn’t have let that idea and desire go. Sheesh… everyone has an opinion - particularly those who will never experience the same pain!
I’m saying for me - and I would imagine for many women who wanted desperately to be mothers but circumstance have not allowed them to… It’s much more freeing to be able to look at a baby without having your ovaries convulse in agony.
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Back to your point Susie…. I’m just saying by the time you have reached the point that you can’t… .well you just can’t and there’s no point crying over spilt milk or dead ovaries.
Sure, they might want to have kids - but I would imagine either A) the reporter left that dilemma out of the story as not to get bogged down with it. or B) the subjects of the story didn’t address it because maybe they’d prefer to share their happy story for print and leave their agonies for another time. or for another article in a Catholic publication that would address it with more delicacy
Yikes, I should have said “delicately” because now it appears we could eat babies as a delicacy… sorry!~
I met my husband in my early 30’s after 6 years invested in a guy who decided he didn’t want to have children with me. My husband is 10 years older then I am and we have 4 children together…plas 2 in heaven.
My youngest was born when I was 45. I had NaPro counselling and progesterone supplementation and I cannot imagine my life without our little wonder boy : ) I am now dealing with the unlikelihood of another baby joining the family, though my older two are begging for a little sister…Many in our family made jokes about my husband “never being able to retire”...then the stock market took a dive and most of them felt the need to keep working or going back to work after retiring…and they don’t get to have the joy of a two year old who jumps in your arms when you come in the door!
I can’t imagine being silly enough the “wear” a biological clock!
I’m a young woman working on my graduate degree in philosophy. I don’t think any of us are unaware of our limited fertility. In fact, I often find the opposite problem - it seems like society, including many parts of the church, is determined to let us know there’s something wrong with us for not looking to marry and have kids right away.
I chose a career, not out of a desire for money, but because I truly felt that was the best use of my life and talents. I think we need to be careful in general of what we expect of women. I see too much artificially limiting women’s roles, from all sides, far beyond what God wants. Some women marry and have children. Some stay single by choice. Some marry but cannot have children. Some look for marriage but don’t find one. We are not all called to the same life - sometimes I think people forget that.
Yes. As I commented in another place, the youth ought to start their families while they are still young and strong. I am certain the Lord will bless and protect them.
@Corita. That comment should be cross stitched on a pillow. In fact I copied it so I can print it out for my daughter to read.
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