Mother, May I?

The English as a Second Language class I teach was moved from Monday to Wednesday this term.

I'm fairly grumpy about it, because Wednesday has traditionally been my crash night - the night I plan an easy, one-pot supper because I know I'll be pretty tired from three full days at work but not close enough to the Friday's-coming boost to have gotten my second wind, and I'll barely have enough energy to clean up a few dishes and herd the kids into bed. I often yawn my way through our nightly Little House on the Prairie chapter, only to snuggle with The Girl and close my eyes for just a minute, until I come back to half-consciousness at midnight and stumble over to my own bed.

That said, as much as I grumble getting into the car to head over to class, I'm always energized by the time I'm done. My students are so eager, so respectful, so gracious. They've checked their egos at the door and laugh as they stumble their way through broken sentences. They're often scholars or recently-arrived professionals, and I'm usually in awe at the collective intelligence in the room. Yet they never murmur dissent as I lead them through yet another inane exercise about predicting who will win the game show on the dated VHS tape we haul out each week.

It also helps that they tell me frequently that I'm so very, very beautiful. Now, given that most of them have spent less than a month in America and that the average age of all the other ESL teachers is closer to 50, their sample size of white women is likely not large or representative. Still, it makes me feel all syrupy inside.

They're also astonished to discover that I am a mother (hee - someone told me I am "what is known as a hot mother" yesterday), and of school-age children no less. The invariable reaction is "but you are too young!"

(To which I usually think, now that's the pot calling the kettle black, as every Chinese woman I've ever met [and Japanese, too, for that matter - hi Shimizu!] is aging so gracefully that the most established matriarch usually appears to be fresh out of grad school.)

Yesterday, after I assured them that yes, I was indeed a mother of a 7-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son, one of my new students burst out proudly that she also has a 7-year-old daughter. She went on to explain, "I have only one child, because of China's one child policy."

Then, with naked longing in her voice, she said quietly, "I would like to have another."

Now I have many friends who have said the same words, or have said with even more longing, "I would like to have even one." Too, too many of them have heard "you cannot" - whether they hear it from the soul-sucking infertility demons or from the will-defeating and bank-account-breaking adoption process. Or worse.

But I do not know anyone who has been told "you may not."

What is that like? To bring your baby into the world with a final, exultant push and realize that you will never carry life inside you again, because you have reached your quota. To celebrate your baby's each new stage even as you mourn the one that's passing, because you know you will not be allowed the opportunity to experience it again. To grieve once a month as your body reminds you of who might have been, and will not be, because you do not have permission.

Certainly I can agree with efforts to slow our ever-increasing burdening of the world. Certainly (in theory, anyway), population control makes sense.

Nevertheless, my heart broke a little bit last night for this mother, and the one beside her who nodded that yes, she too, had only one child and longs for another. And it made me hug The Boy a little more fiercely when I came home, knowing that by some great stroke of undeserved luck, I was allowed to have him.