THE MACARONI AND CHEESE DILEMMA /

LIZ HENRY

wHEN I TURNED THIRTY, the urge to have a baby seemed like a sudden-onset epidemic among the women around me. They yearned—even begged—to become pregnant. If they weren’t putting pressure on their existing partners to procreate, they were trawling for potential poppas—preferably someone with the main criteria of availability. These were women who had once been girls. Girls who were softball teammates and concert-going, chain-smoking good times. Some of them had drifted through jobs without purpose, while others had well-defined education and career goals they were trying to reach. But once thirty hit, they were all on the same life course: motherhood.

I, on the other hand, had been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt—a good decade before them. The last thing I wanted was a second child. Sure, hand me a baby and I will coo adoringly and pinch cheeks and change diapers. And I will do it lovingly, because I really do enjoy babies. But I enjoy babies most when they are not mine and I do not have to pay for them or find a place to live within a school district that’s not a demilitarized zone, or find the elusive “balance” between my goals and what’s best for a new, precious bundle.

At this moment, I feel compelled to tell you that I love my daughter. She is hilarious and I hope that one day all of her TV-watching amounts to her winning an Oscar, or at least a stint on Saturday Night Live. But what if I didn’t feel compelled to tell you that I loved her and that I was a good mother, and instead simply stated that I had no desire to become a mother again? Would it mean I loved her any less? Or that I was somehow less of a mother for not wanting a second child?

Ten years ago I was ambivalent about becoming a mother. Quite frankly, I never thought about it. Hell, I was barely an adult. Sure, I had goals, but they were abstract things like “go to college” and “become a writer.” These were lofty ambitions in my family since no one had attended or graduated from college. In my mom’s case, it was circumstance: a few months before her high school graduation, she found herself unexpectedly pregnant with my sister. She would ultimately receive a diploma and the scorn of her Catholic high school, but that’s it. And to save face, she’d opt for a quick wedding in my grandparents’ backyard. In a way, my mother’s legacy would become mine: a year into college I would find myself pregnant, and like her I would choose to give birth. But I would make my own path, forging ahead with sleepless nights spent writing papers while my infant daughter swayed back and forth in a motorized swing, and my twenty-first birthday came and went without booze.

And just like that, my carefree twenties left me before they even began. I sucked it up and rarely slept. I stuck my daughter in front of the TV while reading articles about how I should never do such a thing. I studied, read, and wrote through trips to the Jersey Shore as my partner and my daughter went to the beach. I signed up for WIC, Food Stamps, and Medicaid so I could remain an insured college student and mother who survived on $12,000 a year. I broke down in tears in a Women’s Studies class, hyperventilating that I was crumbling under the pressure of motherhood.

This was all in the first three years.

I was an epic mess. Fuck, I am still a mess, but back then I was breaking down in front of my own doctor during a physical because I felt so guilty about feeding my daughter Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, which I knew was over-processed crap meant for the apocalypse instead of a run-of-the-mill Wednesday night dinner. I was convinced that the navy blue box and its envelope of cheese sand would stunt my daughter’s potential, and that despite my time constraints, I should be cooking something nutritious and probably organic instead. As I sat on the edge of the exam table and melted down like a hunk of butter in a pot of starchy macaroni—my doctor looked at me and said, “Let her have the mac and cheese.” She said it with such ease that I immediately knew I was putting too much pressure on myself. That it was just a tad insane of me to think that I should be milking a cow, pressing the noodles, and aging the cheese myself in order to feel like I was a good mother.

And it wasn’t just over-processed food that distressed me during those first few years. When I complained to my mother that all of my peers were living adventurous, carefree, creative lives that seemed exotic by comparison, she’d say, “It’s frustrating, I know, you’re watching all of your friends come and go as they please, but when they settle down to have their babies, you’ll be revving and they’ll be settling. You’re doing it in reverse, but it all equalizes in the end.”

Oh, how I clung to those two sentences like they were chiseled in stone and lifted on high from the Mountain of Truer Words Have Never Been Spoken. Her words became my plan, and I was sticking to it. I would cook this meal here, and volunteer my time there, and continue my sleepless nights, all for love and the greater good in the hopes that eventually there would come a time when I got to be me again. When I could sit without interruption, write and sleep, earn without daycare and leave without guilt.

And eventually, it began to happen.

After ten years, my partner and I were still together, our little triangle-shaped family unit was solid, and I was no longer losing my shit over noodles. I had graduated college years before and was beginning to give writing the real shot it deserved. And then, in a case of bitter irony, I found myself pregnant again, alongside all my thirty-something friends. But unlike them, I wasn’t interested in riding this wave. From the moment I thought I was pregnant, to the time I confirmed it with two lines (and then a few more thrown in for good measure), I knew this pregnancy was wrong. It even felt wrong in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t move from my bed, I couldn’t leave the shower without drying myself in despair. This pregnancy was not what I wanted. How could I start all over again? How could I take from the one that I had for another that was yet to be?

It was time to decide.

I knew what abortion entailed, I had witnessed it firsthand. Before I graduated college, I had interned at Planned Parenthood as a grant writer. On Friday mornings, I would drop my daughter off with her babysitter, and then hold the hands of women who opted to have an abortion rather than carry their pregnancies to term. While interning, I saw the faces of young and middle-aged, married and single, poor and with means. I heard stories of sadness and relief. I witnessed women recover and leave to the embrace of their friends or partners, mothers or fathers. Everyone had someone to support them, even if that support was my hand.

I knew that one in three women would have an abortion before their child-bearing years were over, and that most of them already had children at home. For me, abortion was not something I talked about in hushed whispers, but a safe medical procedure I witnessed every Friday for almost a year.

Having another child would have altered my life in much the same way it changes every mother’s, but this time I was not prepared to make that sacrifice. Sadness would have engulfed my very being and followed me around like a shadow. There would be no time for getting ahead or quieting the ambitions that lay dormant, waiting for the right season to flourish. In purely selfish terms, I was not prepared for months of overwhelming sickness or pushing another bundle through the Ring of Fire. (Johnny Cash, by the way, was clearly singing about his wife giving birth. And no one can convince me otherwise.)

My decision was made.

As I made my way to the clinic on the appointed day, I was not weighted by a heavy heart or any regret. This was simply an appointment to end an unwanted pregnancy. I knew the steps I would need to take when I arrived, and had already viewed the state-mandated video informing me that, by law, the father was compelled to provide me with child support. And just in case I was wondering, having an abortion could lead to death. Just like, you know, child birth could (which they didn’t mention).

My name was called, my finger was pricked, my weight was logged, and then my clothes were off. I was on the table, legs spread and cervix numbed before I felt the pain. It was longer than I expected; a take-your-breath-away, grab-onto-something, anything-because-this-is-unbearable pain. And right before I thought I was about to scream, it was over.

I was no longer pregnant.

I made my way to the recovery room, where a nurse gently placed a heating pad on my abdomen, poured ginger ale into a clear plastic cup, and divided graham crackers for my consumption. I drank and munched as more women came and went, some with tears, and others, like me, who just wanted to go home and get on with their lives.

I had an abortion, and the world didn’t end. In fact, it saved the life I have: breakdowns over macaroni and cheese, my child overdosing on TV, writing into the wee hours of the night, and not to be forgotten, my love for other people’s children. I hedged my bets on the family I already had instead of growing into the one I didn’t want.

My mother was right: It all equalizes in the end.