I have a secret. It’s really not that big a deal. I don’t have a love child living in Brazil (that I know of). My husband isn’t a Chinese spy (or at least he’s not Chinese). I don’t hold conversations with myself behind the wheel (though I do babble along with my baby, Benjamin, who’s typically riding rear-facing in the back seat).
In some ways – as my husband often and amicably likes to point out – I’m actually the opposite of a good secret-keeper.
“That was a classic case of too much information,” he’ll say as we begin our drive home after a gathering with our new parents’ group.
“What? Everyone was telling their birth story,” I’ll counter.
“Not your birth story, the part about our new furniture.”
“The new furniture?”
“Yes, the details about our furniture!”
We recently bought our first grown-up bed frame and a hip, designer bookshelf at a local boutique. And, according to my husband, I can’t tell people about our exciting adult purchases without also letting them know that we paid for them with our tax refund.
“It’s totally unnecessary information.”
“What?”
“You don’t need to rationalize our purchases to practical strangers.”
It’s an interesting point. Benjamin is only nine-months-old, so it’s true, we really don’t know the people in the new parents’ group that well. But I actually think I’d be more apt to disclose my secret to a group of strangers than to my closest friends. I’m guessing this isn’t that difficult to believe, as I’m writing an essay about my secret right now; an essay that I hope will be read by many unfamiliar sets of eyes.
My secret is that I’d like to have a big family. There I said it. It’s out. I’m ready for the onslaught of unwanted and unfiltered comments. I’ve careful worded my secret. I didn’t say that I’d like to have a lot of kids. I’ve made this mistake before, only to be met with a predictable and disappointing series of responses: “Are you crazy?” “Why?” “Two is definitely enough,” “Do you plan to win the lottery?” or, the more tempered, “It’s an idea, but it’s not for me.”
In the months since my son was born, I’ve watched one overeducated friend after another attempt to gracefully balance her career and her new role as Mom like a toddler on a rickety seesaw at the local park – a seesaw that these Moms would like to see more often, but it’s just so hard to find the time. I’m one of these Moms myself. I’ve got two masters degrees, two jobs, two loads of laundry by the washing machine, and two hours while Benjamin naps to work on this essay without being interrupted – but I still can’t help wanting to have two more kids, at the least.
I come from a big family. I have three older sisters and one older brother. And I when say older, I mean older. When I made my mid-August debut in 1975, my siblings were 16-, 18-, 20-, and 22-years-old, respectively. Donny had just earned his college degree, fielding curious questions about his pregnant mother from friends at his graduation ceremony: “Is she your real Mom?” To which he replied, perhaps blushing, “Yes.” Carol was preparing for her return to Yale, where according to family lore she’d been dropped off barefoot three years earlier. Diane was packing up to ship out to college for the first time – and would get some quizzical looks when my parents visited her dorm room with a two-month-old later that fall. Laura was at home, likely adjusting to the idea of spending her anticipated years in an empty roost with an infant sister, and the fussing, diapers, and ample babysitting opportunities that came with her.
Over the years I’ve heard differing commentary on my unexpected arrival four months before my Mom’s 43rd birthday. I’ve been called “an afterthought,” “an accident,” “a blessing,” and, the moniker I like best, “a pleasant surprise.”
As a kid, I got a taste of big family life, and I loved it.
Now that I’m starting my own family, I want big Christmas mornings, with presents extending well beyond the circumference of the tree skirt and endless hours of unwrapping and yapping. I want photographs of all my kids with bed heads and eager eyes waiting in footed pajamas at the top of the stairs (even though we live in a ranch). My siblings humored me for years – like, maybe, my first 12 years – agreeing to still gather at the top of the stairs as they had when they were kids and have the traditional “first family” photo snapped before we all raced down to our gifts. I want a family that takes up an entire pew at Mass (even though my husband and I don’t go to church).
I want beach vacations where we all pile in the car in the wee hours of the morning and play car games and sing car songs. I want to feel crowded, like I did when I sat in the way-back of the Chevy station wagon, sandwiched between dozens of brown paper bags filled food as we drove to the shore in Maryland. I want late nights on the boardwalk and rowdy card games on the deck overlooking the ocean.
I want noise. I want busyness. I want every chair around the dining room table full and ideas bouncing off the family photos hanging on the walls. I want bunk beds and a wait for the bathroom in the morning.
I want all these things because they are my sweet memories of growing up in a large family. They are also my only memories, as my husband often and amicably like points out.
“You really have no idea what it’s like to have a big family,” he says. “You only got to experience the good parts. I mean, let’s be honest, you were practically an only child.”
He does have a point.
“You’ve never had to share a thing in your life.”
This is also somewhat true. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not generous,” I counter.
“Sure, but just because you’re generous doesn’t mean we should have five kids.”
Another valid point.
It’s just that I spent so much of my childhood yearning for a family full of like-aged siblings. And now that I’m in a position to produce my own brood, I can’t shake the idea. I spent years enviously eying the large families I’d see in church every Sunday. There was an Asian mother and her four impeccably dressed daughters who always sat in the front left pew; a local doctor and his lovely South American wife with their five bronzed beauties in the middle section; a row of four unkempt toe-headed girls behind us; and a family of three rambunctious young sons with two wise looking older sisters in front.
Instead of listening to the sermon, I’d map out the possible hair and eye combinations of my own future children. I’d picture the big van with plush bucket seats that we’d drive and the huge jungle gym erected in the backyard.
As a first grader, I remember telling my Mom that my plan was to get married, have a big family, and then become a nun after my husband died. I liked the idea of being able to do it all. (It’s unclear where my career fit into my thinking at this early age). Chris and I talk in loose terms about having more than three kids, which is our definition of “big,” but trading my best pair of jeans for a black habit is not something I’ve broached with my husband.
It is a relief to be able to talk about the potential of a big family with Chris, regardless of his myriad reactions: sometimes enthused, sometimes bemused, sometimes unresponsive – like when we are snug under the covers late at night and I want to discuss the idea with him one more time.
Having been married now for two years, it’s easier to reflect on the reasons why I’ve kept my secret from friends and family for the majority of the 25 intervening years since I told my Mom my life plan in the first grade.
Yes, I am apprehensive about people’s reactions, but I’ve also been silenced by the big, fat fear of failure. I can think of few things worse than having everyone feeling sorry for me because I couldn’t find someone willing to spend their life with me, or, worse yet, because I found that person and then discovered that we weren’t able to conceive a child together. The safest way to avoid any unwanted pity was to keep quiet – and to this day, I’m clearly still finding it hard to open up.
However, my reasons for remaining tight-lipped have shifted. For starters, I’ve married a handsome, witty man, who makes me laugh aloud at unexpected times and supports my bouts of irrationality – so I can tick the fear of meeting Mr. Right off my list. Our baby Benjamin was conceived the moment I stopped using birth control – so I know I’m fertile ground, alleviating my concern that I wouldn’t be able to have a baby.
Now my reticence about telling people my secret stems more from the realities of knowing what it’s like to actually have a child. My visions of working in the garden while Benjamin crawled around contentedly in the grass have been replaced with nightmares of him ingesting one of the hundreds of acorns strewn throughout our lawn. Images of him bouncing on my knee as I sip my morning cup of joe in the local coffee shop have been foiled by a nap schedule that rarely allows us to leave the house before 10 a.m.
That said, up to this point in my son’s short life, we’ve still managed to do our fair share of getting around. Benjamin’s been to six states, boarded eight airplanes, and done countless car trips throughout New England. Sure there have been times when he’s fussed in his car seat and one of has had to climb in back to wave rattles and other plush objects his direction or distract him with a dose of fresh sweet peas. But, for the most part, I think we’ve done a pretty darn good job at keeping our lives in motion and still having a good time of it since Benjamin joined our family fold.
However, when we were recently invited to wedding in Sweden, the idea of navigating international airspace with our wonderful wriggly baby boy did not strike me as so super fun. It’s one thing to take an hour-long flight along the eastern seaboard, but toting Benjamin and his behemoth convertible car seat through three airports and numerous modes of public transportation en route to Scandinavia is a different story – and it’s not a story I’m interested in hearing, unless fairytale gnomes are going to be there to help sooth my baby on that ten hour flight and put his little jet-lagged body to bed when we arrive.
Of course, the gentle voice in the back of my head is saying, “Sarah, you realize you only have one child. How do you expect to ever travel with a whole gaggle of them?” It’s a really good question: How do I?
My husband and I have discussed this predicament on numerous occasions. Travel is especially important to him. Growing up, I considered a vacation to be a week at the beach and a week at a family camp in West Virginia, while Chris spent his holidays traipsing through Northern India or exploring the Middle East with his well-traveled parents and younger sister. In my family photo album, I’m sitting at the edge of ocean, hair curled from the humidity, a blue bathing suit pulled awkwardly off one shoulder, squinting in the afternoon sun; whereas young Chris is perched below a monastery in the mountains of Bhutan, one hand gently resting on the leg of the guide who led him and his father on their trek.
Chris says he would like to do a family trip abroad every two years – and don’t get me wrong, that sounds like a good plan to me. It’s just hard to erase the memories of some of our longer pre-Benjamin flights together, like one particularly harrowing journey home from Nepal culminating with Chris hugging the toilet after an allergic reaction to airplane eggs. When I add four bed heads (with potential allergies), four Going to Grandma’s rolly bags, four sets of coloring books and washable magic markers, four high pitched whines and/or wails, and more than four fellow passengers giving me looks that could derail the Acela, I have really pause and ask myself: “If we have a lot of kids will we ever leave the country again before retirement?”
And this is making one huge assumption: that we’ll even be able to retire. Before Benjamin was born, I visited a local investment specialist to transfer an old retirement account into an existing IRA. I also decided to ask the associate about setting up a college savings plan.
“What year will your baby start college?” the helpful woman asked, tapping at her keyboard.
“2024,” I calculated.
“Hard to think that far ahead, isn’t it? You’re smart to get started early,” she said, tossing a nod to my pregnant belly. “Do you anticipate sending the baby to a public or private college?”
“Private, I guess. We might as well assume the worst.”
“Good thinking.” More tapping on the keyboard. “Okay, let me see here, in 2024 the tuition for a four year private college will total $339,824.”
Silence.
The woman looked up from her computer, made brief eye contact, and returned to her typing. “Let me calculate what you’d need to put away per month to reach that goal.” Tap, tap, tap. “Okay, let me see here, you’d need to save $1,753.56 a month.”
Silence.
“I know this sounds high.”
Silence.
The woman shifted in her chair. “Let’s hypothetically assume that you start with $50,000.” Tap, tap, tap. “Then your monthly contribution would be reduced to $1306.15 a month,” she said with a smile.
Was this one of those things people don’t tell you about childbirth? Are all infants actually pulled from the womb with a wad of serious cash in their tight newborn grips? This had not been addressed yet in our Childbirth 101: Becoming a Family class. But we still had a few weeks of coursework left.
In the meantime, it didn’t take a mathematician to calculate that even if each of our darling children was born with $50,000 strapped to their umbilical cord, we’d still need to save more than $1.1 million to put four kids through private college.
I’ve filed this knowledge in the far recesses of my brain, where it can only be accessed with a power-drill and electric saw. On the days when this stealthy file cabinet is somehow wrangled open, I slip Cheaper by the Dozen or the Sound of Music into the DVD player, curl up on the couch next to the baby monitor, take a long, deep breath, and watch my big family dreams come to life for the hundredth plus time.
I’m safe in front of the television in my basement, tucked underground below the chaos upstairs: the toys peppering our imported Tibetan carpet, the Oatios pasted into the crevices of the hair chair, the Diaper Genie that never grants my wish for a lilac-scented nursery. In the basement, I don’t need to field any questions about when we’re going to have our next baby, or how many more babies we’re planning to have. I can still savor my secret down there, away from the unwanted comments and aghast expressions. But once I reemerge at the top of the stairs and enter my well-used laundry room, I’m more willing these days to follow to my husband’s sage advice: “Let’s just take it one baby at a time.”
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