The Guilt of Having an Only Child

My daughter and I are in the art room at the Discovery Museum. We share the clay table with the mother of a newborn and his three-year-old sister. Another mom, pregnant with her second child, sits across from us with her toddler son.

“Do you like being a big sister?” the expecting mom asks the little girl brightly, anticipating the day her boy will play the role of big brother. “Do you help mommy give her a bottle?”

She smiles shyly and gives a proud nod.

My daughter looks up from the blob of clay she’s kneading like a baker. She stares intently at the woman and the little girl, hanging on their every word. I stop my lame attempt to coax a snail from my mound of clay to watch her watching them.

Uh oh. . . here it comes, I think. I wait for her to blurt out that she wants to be a big sister, too. As an only child, she’s made this request more than once.

It doesn’t happen today. But even as I breathe a sigh of relief, I feel a familiar combination of guilt and sadness stirring inside. Guilt because, at forty-seven, I can’t provide her with the sibling she’d love. Guilt because I always feel like she doesn’t quite buy my explanations of why it can’t happen. Everywhere she goes— her school, the park, the museum— she’s surrounded by kids her age with little sisters and brothers or mommies with swollen bellies.

The sadness is for both of us. Because sometimes my yearning for another child is as strong as hers.

It’s a ridiculously greedy dream. I was on the fence, afterall, about being a mom for years. When I miscarried at forty-one I was devastated. But I also accepted that by postponing motherhood for so long, I may have missed my chance. So when I did get pregnant and become a mother at forty-two, the gift was that much sweeter.

Leaving the art room, we pause to gaze at the Golden Gate. It’s wrapped in a soft gray cloak and the day has turned cool since we were last outside.

“You’re my special girl,” I tell my daughter, bending to kiss her cheek.

My one very special child.

By Dorothy O’Donnell