“You can’t understand because you aren’t a mother.”

I’ve heard my own mother say this phrase to me many times over the years.  She usually says it after I tell her not to worry about me.

“I’m sorry, Ame,” she’ll say, “but you just won’t get it until you’re a mom yourself.”  For a long time it would bother me a lot when she said that.  One reason it bothered me was because I used to believe I wouldn’t ever become a mother, which meant what I really heard her say was, “You’ll just never understand me.”  The other reason is that I found that sentence incredibly loaded with guilt and an overwhelming sense of responsibility for how I made my mother feel.  When she worried about me, I worried about her.

Now that I am in my early thirties, the majority of my friends have small children of their own, and while I absolutely love spending time with them, sometimes being around them can be emotionally difficult.  They have something in common with one another that I don’t share with them: the experience of motherhood.  And it isn’t that they are intentionally keeping something from me, or that they are intentionally excluding me from anything.  It’s just the nature of the beast.  I want to empathize with them and while I can imagine what it must be like to nurse a hungry infant in public or soothe a teething baby, I think my mom was right: I really can’t understand because I’m not a mother.

I love my friends dearly and love to hear them talk about their beautiful kids, about the habits and quirks their children have.  I love to hold their kids and talk to them and play with them. I sit and I listen and I try to absorb as much information as I can from the women in my life.  But there is a line that is drawn, an invisible line, and so many times when I am gathering with other women in a public space, be it the shopping mall, an office board room or a hotel ball room, it feels as though I am standing on one side of that line, and all of the other women in the room are standing on the other side.

Today I have just one little thought to share.

I’ve spent sixteen years trying not to get pregnant.  Now I wouldn’t mind it so much.  It’s a very bizarre concept to wrap my head around, this virtual 360°.

A few nights ago I popped out to the mall with my friend, Kelly.  Kelly’s spouse, Andy, was in our wedding in 2006.  They’re great friends, and ever since I met Graham the four of us have spent New Year’s Eve together, having dinner and drinks and playing cards.

Andy and Kelly have been the only remaining couple we know locally who also don’t have children.

Yet.

Andy and Kelly are thrilled to be expecting their first baby this coming April.  So when Kelly and I were out shopping last week we found ourselves inevitably in the Old Navy baby section.  We especially swooned over little tiny man-shirts like these:

When I got home I told Graham that Kelly and I had been looking at the wee baby things in the mall.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “You want a baby now, don’t you?”

“No…not yet,” I answered.

Not yet.

“Not yet” always seems to be the gut reaction I have to this question.

I want to have a family.  I want to have a baby with Graham.  It’s just that the thought of acquiring so much profound responsibility for another human being seems like such a daunting task on the best of days.

I love spending time with my friends and their children.  Some days I feel like some kind of sociologist doing field research.  I watch and listen and try to learn as much as I can about How To Be a Mom, and yet I never feel ready.  Not that I expect all of this observation to totally arm me with all the necessary instinct motherhood requires.  What if I never feel ready?

I guess my question is, if you are a mother, did you EVER really feel ready to make the leap from Couple to Family?  Or did you just hold your breath and JUMP?

I sit out on the deck of our little cottage, looking out over the lake. I’m not doing anything in particular, except looking at the water and sitting, and being quiet, taking the occasional sip of cider from its pony-necked clear bottle. I look down toward the small man-made beach, and decide that it would feel good to put my toes in that water, and to feel that gritty sand beneath my bare feet.

I catch a glimpse of Graham out of the corner of my eye as I head down the steps, and see that he’s crashed out on the couch inside the cottage, dozing off after a long day of driving through the countryside and dreaming the dream of possibilities as we peer at houses in small provincial towns.

“It’s just like we’re at home,” I think to myself and smile as I head down.

The wind is blowing strong, and my skirt blows around my legs, allowing a refreshing cushion of air around the skin beneath. My hair whips free around my head and the wind feels refreshing. I stand in the sand and look out across the water, and feel free, feel the freedom of knowing there is no other place I need to be at this moment, there is no one expecting anything of me right now, except exactly what I am doing.

I look down the lake and see another, future version of myself kneeling down next to a little girl, helping her with her small pail and shovel, keeping her safe from the rippling water. In that spark of imagination, I can see that there will be a day when I am needed by others, when their expectations will be great, but in that moment I feel a great flash of hopefulness, a pang of excitement and a slow smile spreads across my face and I know that this is where I am meant to be.

(In other words, our holiday was fantastic. I’ll post a few photos soon! In the meantime, please check out my latest post at BlogHers ACT Canada, The 100 Mile Diet and My “not-so-local” Breakfast.)

Last month I wrote a post about my trip to a local grocery store on a weekday and how it seemed to me that babies were everywhere. I thought that perhaps I’d lose a few of my child-free readers.

The “Babies Everywhere!” theme continues, folks.

My friend and former roommate, Victoria recently had her second baby, a boy named Erik, on her birthday. She called me on the evening that she got home from the hospital and said, “Guess what I got for my birthday?” I guessed that she got a baby, and I was right.

Four fellow blog writers, three of whom I’ve met at least once in person have had their babies in the last month.

Yesterday, a co-worker told me her happy news: she’s 14 weeks pregnant.

Other bloggers whose sites I read are writing regularly about their pregnancies.

Today, a friend e-mailed me photos of her brand new baby niece.

My step-sister-in-law is due to have her third child, a baby boy, in August.

The babies are everywhere! I’m trying to think of other things, honest I am, but how can I be expected to hold out until the end of July, according to our plan, to put this baby stuff off to the side when these little munchkins are being whizzed at my head and heart at lightning speed?