My dearest budding Liberace,
If my father, a man with profound hearing loss, can play both the guitar and the piano, I have no doubt you and your perfectly normal, not quite forty-year-old hearing will emerge from your piano lessons triumphant. Unless you are secretly prepping for a recital at the Luce, why stress yourself out so much? It’s nothing to be scared of.
Is this the time in our lives where we claw ourselves out of whatever adult rut we’ve found ourselves stuck in, and force ourselves to learn something new? Should we get a red convertible with a retractable roof? We are nearly forty. If we don’t start now, then when?
I had a small epiphany of sorts last night. I was reading an essay by this woman whose husband came out as a trans woman; while she still loved him, because she identifies as straight, their marriage couldn’t last, so they separated but shared visitation rights with their child, whom she bore after numerous failed IVF attempts. She wrote about how her doctor kept referring to her pregnancy as “geriatric”, since she was already forty. I thought about my choice of not having children, and how I would feel once the not having of children is no longer something borne out of free will, but something enforced by age. I don’t like it. It makes me itchy. This is not to say I am going to go out and get pregnant just to stick two middle fingers up at the world by proving I can; it’s just to say that I don’t like the idea of no longer having a choice. But it’s too late, anyway. It was too late when I turned thirty-two and my mother said not to bother, because “it could be ‘special’.” My mother, ladies and gentlemen.
You are right about things being different now. Now we can tell whether the baby will have developmental issues, and the woman gets a choice whether or not to proceed. Planned Parenthood at its finest! But even with that option in play, there are still some things one should no longer do at this age, unless one is Jennifer Lopez. Or Madonna. Whether or not I like having a choice is moot, because nature always wins. It wins in the air above the Schiphol airport. It wins when you turn 40 (and what is 39 but a hop, skip and a jump away?). The last of my ova are just hanging out, knitting sweaters, waiting for the resurrection. Why fight it? Is motherhood, which I’m not even sure I want, and am definitely sure I’m not fit for, really the hill I want to die on?
A woman’s ability to bear children has an expiration date. Unlike piano lessons, which can be entered into at any time.
They say it’s never too late to learn something new. They also say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Ano ba talaga, Tito Bhoy?
I believe you when you say you are fine.
You’re fine.
I believe you.
I do.
I believe… in life after love, after love, after love,
Nikka
Saving for Botox 