The legacy

All my life I have been surrounded by childless women. I don't know if this happens as frequently in other families, but there seems to be one in each generation on my mothers' side, stretching back 3 generations. When I start getting baby cravings and feeling sorry for myself, I find comfort in revisiting their lives.

The first one that I know of is Great-Great Aunt Kit, a schoolteacher and all-around grand lady that I never had the good fortune to meet. But I have her tidy scrapbooks, dating from the years 1917-1919. The books are packed with pictures, ribbons, programs, letters, receipts and other flotsam of a young woman's life. It's uniquely her and unusually forward thinking. She was an athlete and one of my favorite pictures is of her high school basketball team. I didn't know such a thing existed in 1917 as organized girls' sports, especially since Title IX wasn't even signed into law until 1971. She did marry and they appear to have been very devoted but there were no children. I wonder if this was a heartbreak for her? I'll never know.

All her wonderful things passed to her niece, my Great Aunt Jean. Aunt Jean was also an amazing lady. She spent WWII serving in the military as either a WAC or WAVE; I'm sad to say I'm not clear on the details. We recently had 19 rolls of her 35 mm film cleaned, restored and developed. Many of the photos were of her days at a military base in CA, roughly 1943-1945. My mother believes she was a flight instructor for the military. She also loved to ski, traveled to Europe, made friends with squirrels and was a school teacher. She died loved but unmarried. Her things went to her favorite niece, my mother.

The next generation yielded another aunt with impeccable education, great humor and plenty of class. I have spent very little time speaking with her since she moved away several years ago. But I can picture her smile, her eastern accent (which is so different from the Midwestern twang I grew up hearing) and I still receive a Christmas gift from her every year.

Included in that generation is also my stepmother, whose story I do know well. She is childless first for health reasons and finally by choice. Betrayed by her body and unwilling to continue pursuing a baby, she has settled in to middle age with the certainty that things were meant to be this way: she seems at peace. Our life together was an often painful prelude to my own career as a stepmother. We learned together the hard way but I'm a better stepmom because of our mistakes.

Do I regret my own choice? Sometimes. Once in a while I can feel my arms around a child, settled on my hip, smelling like baby lotion and hands all sticky. I can see myself smiling at a child that never came. But most days I pad through my tidy house in peaceful oblivion, happy not to be tripping over toys and wiping up spills. My husband feels the same, I think. Does he look at his almost grown baby and regret that there won't be more? Does he wonder, as I do, what our child would have been, what traits he or she might have shared? Would there have been a curly brown or red-haired boy or girl -- eyes green like his or hazel like mine?

In the end, I am not alone. I share a legacy with great women. Someday I will pass along their precious mementos to a museum or University archive where they will live on forever. As for me, my life will end with no children from my body but rather with two daughters of the heart. Hopefully, my own stories will live on in their recollections. Their love for me is a love of choice -- not obligation -- and I am grateful for it.