Awakening October 4, 2007

A tooth. A puppy tooth of all things.  To think that such a small, rather insignificant thing could spark such a change.  The tooth appeared on cool October day, as I was playing tug of war with my new dog Luna.  She was a ball of peach colored fuzzy fur tipped with dark brown. She was tenacious for such a little pup.  We were playing and she was pulling and bobbing, jumping and growling trying to get the rope free from my hands.  When I finally tired of playing and let her win she pranced off with the rope in her mouth, proud of her accomplishment and settled into her doggy bed to chew on her prize.

Eventually she brought the rope back to me and set it at my feet.  As I leaned down to pick it up I saw a puppy tooth caught between the fibers.  I pulled the tooth out and examined it, turning it this way and that, I smelled it, felt its relative weightlessness in my palm.  Then I picked her up and nuzzled her because I realized that tooth signified that she was quickly becoming a dog and wouldn’t be a puppy for much longer.  Time was flying.

That tooth meant so much more to me than that though.  It ignited within me a maternal instinct that I didn’t know existed.  That tooth symbolized everything that I would be missing out on if I didn’t have a child.  See, I always said I didn’t want children.  Children were for the birds.  I had dreams of traveling unencumbered by the burden of children, doing things as I willed with no regard for anyone else.  I didn’t think I had it in me to be a mother, let alone a good one.  I was selfish and bad with children.  I didn’t want children. 

When I was but a child myself I always imagined myself old and alone living in a Victorian house with a crazy garden.  I thought I would be the old women living in the house that the children were scared of.  As I got older and married my husband I abandoned that dream but still didn’t ever see myself as a mother.  I never saw a baby and wanted to pick it up and hold it, the baby smell held for allure to me.  I would go as far as to say that I was afraid of babies, with their delicate bodies, incessant screaming and innocent vulnerability.

But this puppy tooth brought out feelings in me I didn’t know I could even feel.  I imagined my own children, growing up, going to school, losing teeth.  I imagined my house filled with warmth and the laughter of children, backpacks lying by the door and homework spread across the dining room table, all the little moments that would fill my life up.  I realized that was what my life was missing.  In that moment I knew that I was trying to fill my life up with everything that didn’t matter all the while avoiding the one thing that did.

Maybe I wasn’t ready to think about having children before then, maybe it was never right before then.  In that moment, holding that tooth I knew my life was going to change.  I knew what was missing.