chapter 9 - the children question

In the end we flew to Cusco rather than duplicate a long bus journey, and thrilled to the sight of puffing volcanoes that looked like pimples on the face of the earth below. We saw Chivay clearly too and the entire valley we’d just recently been through before swooping down into the ancient Inca capital. From the air I could just make out the puma shape it was constructed to depict.


Our hostel is run by a Swiss couple who have adopted a dozen or so Peruvian children and use the hostel profits to help other local homeless children. It’s immaculately clean, friendly and as the most wonderful courtyard full of flowers.

I’m a little ambiguous. Normally, I revel in being anywhere where there are a bevy of happy kids around, especially in Catholic countries where children are as necessary for a family’s survival as bread or water. But in this place I feel flooded. Maybe it’s the thin air making me so emotional. I well up and lie on the bed, refusing anything but clear liquids to help dispel the headache that has again returned. Hamish sat awhile in the courtyard, quietly bringing me tea and water and stroking my hair. I squeezed his hand to show him I appreciate his attention but I am most relieved when he goes off on his own to look over the town and I can shut the door and lie in the dark, alone to cry and shiver. In the afternoon the children came back from school and I heard them, chattering and laughing. I determined to face my misery, washed my face in cold water and sat in the courtyard where they play and read. Some came over to sit with me, show me card games and teach me words in their native Quechuan while I struggled with Spanish. One grave boy who unsmilingly stood on the fringes asked me suddenly “Are you married?” and I replied, “Yes, are you?” That brought a smile and I felt victorious.

Hamish returned and fit in like an older sibling, conversing in fluent Child about soccer and school. In the evening we sat in a candlelit common room and gradually met other guests, Spaniards Manuela and Paolo, a Cockney named Seb, a Dutch couple, Margot and Peter, the former being extremely pregnant - I poured myself a big glass of wine despite the altitude - and an American named Bradley.

Everyone got into the dance of conversation among strangers, starting with “what do you do” and going on from there. I sipped my wine gingerly, watching Hamish exchanging cultural reference points with Seb over old British TV shows from their childhood. There’s something comforting about talking to someone from our own country, even if they’d live in a completely different time or place within it.


From individual stories we expanded, talking at length about the perception of the world post-September 11. Wonderful to talk to an American traveller about it at last: we haven’t seen many, nor Canadians for that matter. As if the entire continent had been curfewed. Bradley was educated, intelligent, thoughtful and open-minded, interested in and knowledgable about the world around him, and yet was genuinely perplexed as to why anyone could feel animosity towards his country. Hamish complimented the Dutch couple on maintaining their national tradition. They looked puzzled at first and he enlightened them. “No matter how tiny the island, how remote the desert, how great the mountain, always the intrepid Dutch are there.” Peter smiled, “It’s because there are too many of us to fit in such a small country. Everytime someone returns home another of us must leave. It’s written in the constitution.”

“Ah I see. Nomadic tag.”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. I am surprised Britain has not thought to do the same thing.”

“Well, yes, after all ‘nomad is an island’.”

They shared a laugh and I knew Hamish had found another friend for life. He has a genius for finding and keeping friends.

Margot asked, “Have you noticed how many cell phones there are in Peru? Everyone has one it seems.”

Seb replied. “Internet cafes too. They are all over Chile as well, and even in Bolivia, the poorest country I’ve ever been in.”


“But how is that possible? Why are there so many when many villages still lack basic electricity?”

Bradley added “One girl in the seat opposite mine on the bus went through every single ring tone option during the entire journey. I heard ‘Jingle Bells’, ‘Scotland the Brave’, ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’, and all those classical tunes everyone knows one line of. I mean, just how familiar is Beethoven’s 9th and the Polovetsian Dances to a teenaged Peruvian?”

Paolo interjected, “Why should we think being wireless is so strange here? There’s no infrastructure, no understanding as to why wires are needed at all so there are no barriers to moving ahead technologoically.”

“Wireless before they are wired. What will this generation in countries such as this be capable of? What will they bring to the world’s future while we first world inhabitants sit complacently in our sense of superiority tied to our old infrastructure? Is it the same elsewhere? What about other third world countries, and by the way does anyone know what comprises the second world if there is such a thing and if so would they enlighten me? Has anyone experienced this in Africa or the Middle East recently?”

I love these kinds of evenings, hearing everyone’s stories and histories, opinions about the world and its treasures, ideas, thoughts, memories. While the others were embroiled in a deep consideration of the UN’s value in the present day, Hamish and I quietly exchanged news from home gleened from his afternoon’s visit to one of the aforementioned internet cafés.

“Niki’s third was born yesterday. Another boy. Akiko.”

“Is she ok?”

“Yes, all well.”

I smiled to myself. Of all the people to become a baby producer, Niki was the least likely!

“Sam emailed too. She just got a big contract in Silicon Valley.

“How is Kanoe?”

“Kanoe is out. She’s with Hellebore now. I told you about that didn’t I?”


“I can’t keep up with her partners. They all seem the same to me. Genderless creatures with hippy names."

Bradley asked me about the difference between a ‘Peters Projection’ and a ‘Winkel Tripel’ map.”
Margot interjected, “Isn’t it odd that they keep changing maps? That a new one comes out? Don’t you find it annoying?”

“Annoying? Oh no. It shows the earth still has something to tell us.”

“Countries change, borders change. Politically the world changes. But the shape of it doesn’t.”

“Sure it does. Topography is a moving science. Erosion, Eruptions, Earthquakes. Ice caps melting. Deserts shifting.”

“Like people, really” intoned Margot. “The self. We delve deeper and deeper inside a place or a thought the longer we are within it.”

“Bodies, too. They certainly change with age,” Seb guffawed while grasping either side of a portly belly with his big hands.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Peter rub Margot’s belly in that proprietory way expectant fathers have. Someone asked when she was due, the talk next turning to families. This is to be her first and she glimmers with the joy of it, vividly telling us everything about the room she has ready, the clothes she has made, the midwife she has hired, the plans she has formed. I was doing fine until she turned to me and asked, “What about you? Do you have children?”

Damn. That one simple question, one I am asked over and over as a middle aged married woman, one that I have developed answers for when I can and evasions for when I can’t. Whether it was the air or the wine or something else, I came undone, mumbled how my headache had returned and so sorry but I must go lie down and take a pill, and excused myself. On the way back to the room, the tears began their cascade. After all this time I am still never prepared for it. Someone once advised me to invent some children and have them staying with my mother. But when the question comes I halt, blush and shuffle, eyes down and I can’t quite get out the lie.

I wonder at the fairness at a limited future for so many mites growing up in ignorance and illness around the world while there’s no one to receive the future I envisaged for a family of my own. I have been lucky to be able to choose the sporadic turns my life has taken on the whole, but was unable to realize the one thing I always thought would be there waiting. Hamish joined me awhile later, lit a candle and turned to me, the impatience in his voice there, however hard he tried to mask it.

“You can’t hide away forever, love. There will be children everywhere we go all our lives.”

I sat up, tear stained and blotchy no doubt. Candlelight illuminates but also closes in the world, the only objects that exist lying within its circle, the bogeyman lying without. “But it’s different when you’re a woman. You never get asked about your children and why you don’t have them. You don’t get the suspicious looks that follow or, worse, the pitying looks. Woman who can conceive have no idea what it’s like not to be able to. Everyone thinks you can just go to a clinic, adopt, try harder. They have no idea that that’s not always enough, that money and effort can’t always do it, that wanting it is not enough.”

He sat on the bed.

“And we never seem to get it together at the right time. You’re always away building something. Or I am away. The time we do get to spend never seems to be the right time for my body. Men never have to worry about the right time. But it never seems to work out for me, and then another month is gone.”

He stroked my hair. “We must think of this positively. We can do all the things we would otherwise not be able to do if we had children.”

He’s said all this before. We’ve said all this. ‘We’ll adopt the world instead. Spend time with our friends’ children and give them weird and wondrous gifts to the envy and horror of their parents. Start new projects and add more friends. Run toward instead of away. Play the hand we’ve been dealt.’

Hamish always tries to sees the postive – no pain, no false hope, no desperate despair. I wonder if he will be so glass half full when he sees me at 50, 70. No grandchildrens’ photos to show, no stories to pass on. Niki tells me how lucky I am – my body still firm and slim, no interruptions in life and its activities, plans never prefaced by before or after cetain trimesters, school holidays, band camp. Sidney in her perfect world gamely offers advice gleaned from years of PTA and coffee morning conversations. Cross you legs above your chest for 20 minutes after sex. No caffeine for two weeks before trying. Sam is scathing about ‘middle aged mothers with accessory babies'. “Cosseted infants in strollers too wide for the sidewalks wheeled by smug women in floral dresses with the same boring haircut and body language saying ‘I’m a mother, let me through, stand aside and look at me, look at us.’ " Not having kids doesn’t bother Sam, but then nothing ever did. And I suspect being a lesbian invokes different speculations and expectations. At least she told me it does. People don’t treat her the same once they know. Depending on who it is, she’s treated either one of the boys or something less than human.

Hamish turned to face me, looking deep into my watery eyes. “You’ve always been the one saying what do we do next? There was always this “can do” attitude. Even when things failed, you were always the one to say try something else. This is a tough one I know. But you know we have tried everything. All those treatments, drugs, and the huge costs; we certainly can’t feel any regret for not having tried everything we could. And you especially went through such awful things. I hated that you were in such pain. And now you keep putting yourself though it again emotionally. Needlessly. There’s nothing else we can do.”

I looked down. “It’s so unfair. There are so many unwanted children, especially here, children by the dozen, poor and uneducated. And people always think we don’t like kids, that we don’t have them because we don’t want them, or that we’re at fault. ”

“Ignore them and what they say. They are ignorant and thoughtless.”

“But it’s hard. The situation will always be there. People will always ask if I have children and why not. It’s hard to accept completely. My body has rejected me, rejected you.” My voice broke and the words came out in short gasping sobs. I covered my face with my hands and wept. I couldn’t control it. I hated the loss of control, the utter abandonment of breath and thought.

Hamish held me and rocked me as he had been doing for years. “Shh, shh. I know. I know. I know what you feel.”

I pushed him away. “But …you…don’t…! You don’t. It’s not you is it? You can conceive no problem. It’s me. It’s my body’s fault. It’s my problem. The only way we could ….” I stopped suddenly.

“You’re talking about surrogacy aren’t you? Or adoption. You know how I feel. I don’t want to do that. We both found the same things, talked to the same people and agencies, heard the same horror stories.” Softening his tone, “I always wanted a piece of you in my child, a child that combined us, that had your deep golden brown eyes, your mental curiosity. I could handle donor insemination you remember. With that, there would still have been part of you there. I know it’s not logical or politically correct but you know, most people don’t get any sort of chance to really think about it. Those lucky and stupid enough to have kids after a night of beer. Having kids that way is biologically lucky, but you and I both know that intelligence has nothing to do with it. Any idiot can have a baby.”

“Except this idiot.”

I lay back on the bed, tired at the repetition. This was old ground. What was left to say? “Is this it then? You and me alone in the years. Is that enough? When you could have more?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No I don’t. I’m not a mind reader.”

‘But you are,’ I think to myself. ‘You’ve always been able to read my mind.’ I propped myself on one arm, and looked down at the pattern of the coverlet, picking at a loose red thread, unable to meet his eyes. “You and me. Maybe it is really a sign. Is this perhaps as far as it should go? I mean. You could have a baby with someone else, be a parent, with someone else. With me you never can. I’m 44, we both know that if it hasn’t happened yet with all the drugs and the in vitro and the icse and everything then it isn’t going to happen at all. You’re a man; age isn’t an issue with you. You can go out and start fresh at 40, 50, 60. You could walk down the aisle of a college graduation on a Zimmer frame and people would say “Isn’t he wonderful, a devoted father, he wanted children so much he had them at 72, good for him. But me – a woman in her mid-40s? I’m a freak. If I walked down the street with a baby I’d get called grandma” I paused. “Of course that won’t happen because I can’t have kids at all.” I hastened ahead, not letting him speak. “You know people still ask if there’s anything more we haven’t tried, anything more I haven’t tried. Even close friends. My mother. I know she thinks I’ve failed as a wife by not being able to give you children.”

I had another vision of myself aging. Walking along in some city in a servicable grey suit with brisk steps, a cell phone clamped to my ear, alone, childless, every Friday pouring over the cultural section of the newspaper, the weekend openings circled in red. But then of course I wouldn’t be alone, I’d have Hamish. I remind myself to include him in the vision and it’s an effort. I sometimes wonder if I’d tried to get pregnant in my 20s, when I was with Andrew, would I have been able to? All those years of birth control and care, were they for naught? A joke that Nature and God shared? ‘Let’s give her everything but that. Then we’ll see how strong she really is.’

Hamish was silent throughout my internal self-loathing but I could feel his presence, palpable in the dark. He is like a blanket, settling over me, comforting, stifling. ‘Stop it’, I think. It’s not fair to him. He can’t do anything about it. I try to throw off the blanket. “Of course I know it’s just me feeling sorry for myself. I can‘t help thinking if you were with someone else you’d be a father right now. You’d be such a fantastic father.”

“Now don’t start that. You’re being ridiculous. I don’t want to be with anyone else. We just have to….adjust.”

I knew that despite his confident words he was still wrestling with the philosophic side of it all. Or wrestling with me wrestling with the philosophic side of it all. We sat, separated by a few inches that might be miles as the velvet night enwrapped us both, tired, empty. The same feeling every time, the same words, the same outcomes. As if one of these times, one of us might have something new to add.