The Childless Aunt

For years, on the first day of my period, I would leave the house dressed for combat. I’d wear cargo pants with multiple pockets all stuffed with supersize pads, S+ tampons, wet wipes, and extra underwear. Despite constant vigilance, almost every month I lived through some manner of indignity: I would get up from a restaurant chair to realize I was sitting in a puddle of blood; stand up from a work meeting to feel rivulets trickling down my legs and then shove tissues into my underwear just so I could hobble to the bathroom; have to explain to a boss why I needed a new office chair. The constant cloud of fatigue and anemia came to be my natural state. I didn’t have a single pair of underwear that wasn’t bloodstained—or, for that matter, a set of sheets or a mattress protector. The days of hemorrhaging left me lightheaded and depleted, prone to pulling muscles, pinching nerves, and catching every passing cold. Each time the ordeal came to an end, I would try to enjoy the few days of feeling normal, until the cycle started again.

The excessive bleeding began in my early thirties, the result of benign fibroid tumors in my uterus. I was told that surgery was the best option, especially if I wanted to have children. I had never been in a rush to become a parent, but I’d always viewed child-rearing as an essential human experience, one that gave meaning to our fleeting existence. I agreed to the surgery—an invasive abdominal procedure akin to a cesarean that required cutting through skin, fat, muscle, the lining of the abdominal cavity, and finally the uterus. It took me weeks to recover and left me with a ten-inch scar for life.

Within a year the fibroids were back, and with them the uncontrollable bleeding, anemia, and anxiety. Hoping to avoid a second invasive procedure, I pursued every manner of naturopathic cure, from herbal remedies to castor oil compresses to meditation, but none stopped the bleeding. I eventually depleted my reserves of red blood cells so thoroughly that I required an emergency transfusion and another surgery.

As soon as I recovered, I dragged my partner to a fertility clinic. We were not married, and I was not ready to be, but it seemed clear that my time was running out to conceive a child. A father of three adult kids, John would have preferred a more conventional course to our relationship—marriage first, then children—but he also understood what was at stake and indulged my sense of urgency.

Each of the four failed IVF cycles was its own ballad of grief and shattered dreams. The inability of my body to produce one single egg capable of growing into a bundle of cells that multiplied exponentially until they formed nature’s ultimate masterpiece was a monumental loss for me. Every other challenge in my life had eventually succumbed to the potent combination of hard work, stubborn perseverance, and sheer will, but not this one.

“Just because you’re used to suffering doesn’t mean you should continue to endure it,” my gynecologist said. She had told me this many times while recommending a hysterectomy. But enduring suffering was the only way I could keep alive the possibility of becoming pregnant. So, although I assured her I would consider the surgery, I dismissed the idea as soon as I stepped out of her office.

For a long time I did not consider adoption. I had trouble imagining how a non-biological child could trigger in me the willful abdication of self that parenthood seemed to require. My own mom often reminded me that she’d lost several salvageable teeth while pregnant with me because she feared the anesthesia for a root canal might harm me in the womb. From everything I had seen, parenting was a punishing feat of self-sacrifice. I was worried I couldn’t give that kind of love to a son or daughter who was not a biological extension of myself.

But my desire to become a mother was about more than the love I had to give. It was also about greed, and a fear of death, and a search for meaning. It was a desire to be rooted to the moment by the pressing demands of another, to shape the future and leave a positive legacy, to be responsible for something beyond myself. And it was the million imagined moments that, like a draw-by-number exercise, added up to a distinct, recognizable picture of being a mom: I wanted the sleepy snuggles of a tired child, the way their little arms lay claim to your body and their head burrows into its nooks. I wanted to grit my teeth as I watched them climb a jungle gym, then clap and say, “Bravo!” I wanted to take them to the woods rather than the mall, to pass on my love of biking and hiking and camping, to introduce them to the mellow bliss of physical exertion and the intoxicating smell of pine sap on a summer day. I wanted the awe of discovering who they are beyond my feeble attempts to shape them, the discomfort of witnessing an act of their unkindness, the wrath I’d incur by depriving them of electronic devices until they were old enough to vote. I wanted to watch them walk into the world and chart their winding path, hoping that I’d given them a compass to steer them away from treacherous cliffs and guide them through the swampland of mistakes and grief. I wanted the knowledge that even though they would never love me with the same throbbing fervor with which I loved them, they would at least be there for me as I withered in old age.

Though a faint hope that I might yet conceive continued to smolder in the back of my mind, at some point it dawned on me that none of these joys and trials I wished for myself were exclusive to biological parents. I could love any child who needed me.

John and I tried private adoption first, but after we spent months preparing to adopt a baby, the birth mom changed her mind. Unable to take another loss like that, we signed up to be foster parents through our county. It was a long process: training, background checks, home study, and an inventory of everything in our lives, from smoke detectors to dental cavities—or, at least, that’s how it felt. And yet when the social worker finally called with a potential placement, we still felt unprepared. But we were in. We got in the car and drove to the address we were given.

Ekin came out of the building dragging a battered suitcase and carrying an oversized plushie and a computer monitor, a social worker trailing behind with the rest of her belongings. She was seventeen, tall and beautiful, with straight black hair that fell down her back. She wore sweatpants and a loose T-shirt and smelled faintly of stewed food. This was her fifth move in several months, and she had learned about it just minutes before we’d pulled up. We were braced for tears or obvious signs of trauma, but the young woman we met was calm, sweet, and personable.

After we exchanged awkward pleasantries, we loaded her belongings into the trunk and asked what she liked to eat. John instantly seized on the benefits of having a tiebreaker in the family, and we headed to the neighborhood pizza joint. Watching Ekin devour several cheesy slices in rapid bites, we told her a little bit about ourselves and listened as she shared her story. Between the social workers, lawyers, judges, court-appointed child advocates, and now us, she had recited the details of her life countless times, assembling the fragments into a coherent narrative. It was as if, by telling the story, she too was trying to understand it.

She had been raised by her aunt and uncle, and for a long time she’d believed them to be her biological mother and father. When she learned they were not, she assumed she was adopted, only to find out in her teens that no official adoption had taken place, even though her biological parents had relinquished their parental rights. I think she felt not just deceived but betrayed. The discovery cast her entire life in a different light. All the challenges from her childhood came into sharp focus, while all the good memories—the family vacations, the bike rides, the movie dates with her dad, the hugs and snuggles and affectionate nicknames—faded. The only home she’d known no longer seemed like a safe place, and she ran away. She returned briefly, left again, and finally ended up in a group home.

While she was there, her father/uncle would come to visit, and she looked forward to seeing him. When she was young, he used to call her his little monkey, because she would drape herself over his shoulders and refuse to let go. He was the parent who’d dropped her off and picked her up from school and who would come to get her early if she was sick. He was the one who’d planned family adventures, bought movie tickets, and taken her to tae kwon do. In his mid-seventies now, he was still working full-time to support his family. Then, just a few days before Ekin was to leave the group home, he had a heart attack and died.

Ekin came to live with us shortly thereafter, still reeling from the death of the only father she’d ever known. Although she had clearly been loved, she had never been given a satisfying explanation for why she was in the situation she was in, and now that her most reliable caretaker was gone, she maybe never would. To John and me, having just met her, she seemed like one of those optical illusions that change shape when you turn your head: One moment sheltered; another, deeply traumatized. Affectionate, then detached. Strong yet fragile.

Ekin and I bonded fast. It was as if we instinctively understood each other’s ache: hers for a mother, mine for a child. Often, when I was in the kitchen getting dinner ready or watching a movie on the couch, she would reach for me, and my entire being would open to take her in. She quickly started calling me Mom. When we were out and about, strangers assumed we were mother and daughter, despite our different races. She could fit into my clothes and often rummaged through my closet for whatever she needed. At the homecoming dance that year, she looked stunning in my cocktail dress, earrings, and rhinestone-studded heels. It wasn’t long before she told us she loved us, and each night, before we went to bed, we would stand on the threshold of her room and embrace her.

“Won’t it break your heart to give her back?” people often asked when they learned John and I were foster parents.

Of course it would. But my heart was not afraid of pain. It was afraid of giving less than it had to give. From the day she had come to live with us, I’d wanted to give Ekin everything a kid deserves: normalcy, safety, love, solace, opportunity. And anyone who stood in the way of that drew my wrath. When I tried to explain this feeling to a couple of friends, they smiled knowingly.

“Welcome to mama-bear mode,” one of them said.

I felt the mama-bear energy in my bones, ready to growl and huff at any obstacle, to charge if needed.

The most immediate tasks we needed to tackle were all the administrative milestones of near adulthood that had been neglected in the swirl of Ekin’s family drama. We signed her up for driving classes, got her a Social Security card (which she’d never had before), scheduled her dental and medical appointments, and worked with her on submitting college and scholarship applications—all while also trying to keep things light: getting our hair done, shopping for vintage clothes, decorating her room.

Shortly after she came to live with us, we went on a kayaking day trip with John’s large family—three generations and more than a dozen rambunctious voices, all with something to say all of the time. Though initially reluctant to come, Ekin quickly blended in and seemed at ease in this multigenerational web of kinship. As we floated down the sun-streaked, tree-lined river, she kept checking on the little kids, pulling or pushing them along, handing out snacks, offering to swap kayaks with them to make them more comfortable.

“She is really strong,” our son-in-law said admiringly while we stood watching Ekin drag a kayak up a steep riverbank.

“She is,” I agreed, feeling ridiculously proud, as if I’d had anything to do with her strength. “Black belt in tae kwon do.”

More than pride, what I felt that day was unbridled happiness. It felt so good to see Ekin smile—not the melancholy grin we often got, but a teeth-baring smile of genuine joy.

At home Ekin was often sluggish and, to my mind, unmotivated. Left to her own devices, she would sleep through the day and game through the night. Homework was a struggle, and often the only sure way to know she was studying was to study with her. We quizzed her on history and biology, and I demanded to read her essay assignments and review her grades. I had dueling goals: to recapture that smile from the river but also to instill a sense of responsibility and accountability. Both felt equally important.

Thinking it had been the physical activity and natural surroundings that had made her so happy, I tried to take her for hikes and bike rides. She went along some of the time, rarely saying no outright but often dragging her feet. Her acquiescence was likely a defense mechanism: She craved safety and was willing to pay for it with compliance. Sometimes I read her body language and let her off the hook; other times I pushed her onward despite her protests

“It’s too hot,” she would say, huffing and puffing as we walked along the riverside bike path, her flip-flops scraping the pavement as if each step required herculean effort.

“This seat is too hard,” she would whine as we got ready for a bike ride.

“Uggggh,” she’d grumble when I would try to wake her up for a late-morning activity, her face scrunching against the assault of the light from a crack in the curtains. She would roll away from my touch, wrapping herself in the sheets like a sleepy burrito.

I would take the hint and let her be, but soon enough I’d be back to nagging: Did you write that essay? Did you reach out to the math tutor? Show me your to-do list. Let’s go for a walk. Come help me cook. Go help John with that woodworking project you said you wanted to do. If I wasn’t pushing her, I felt like I was failing her.

Friends reminded me that she was only a few months past the death of her father and still actively grieving; that I should give her a break. I’d thought I was. Balancing understanding while maintaining expectations proved tough.

Foster care is by definition temporary. The goal is always family reunification. Because she would soon be eighteen, Ekin had a little more say in the matter, and several months after she came to live with John and me, she expressed an interest in being permanently placed with us. In an unusual show of unity, her social worker, her guardian ad litem, and the judge all agreed that this would be in Ekin’s best interest and granted us permanent foster parent status.

And then, just a little shy of her eighteenth birthday, Ekin decided to leave—and not in the mild-mannered fashion in which she did almost everything, but dramatically.

She had wanted to visit a friend in a different state, and we’d told her she could do that after finals, which were a week or two away. She wanted to go right now. We said no, and she went anyway. A part of me was actually proud of her. Here was something she cared about and was willing to go out on a limb for. On a more practical level, she had executed a fairly complex operation: saved enough money, figured out how to buy an interstate bus ticket, gotten herself to the station, and arranged to be picked up at her destination. I had met her friend before and had spoken to the friend’s parents, so I wasn’t worried for her safety. What concerned me were her flagging grades and lack of a plan for the future. I lectured her over the phone and told her that if she was going to continue living with us, she would have to follow the rules.

When she came back, I picked her up from the bus station and drove her home in silence. I assumed we would all sleep on it and wake up ready to work things out the next day. Instead I heard a racket in the basement. I went down to see what was happening and found her dragging out the same battered suitcase she’d carried the day we met.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Where do you think you are going to go?”

“It’s none of your business.”

Technically it was—for another five days anyway, until she turned eighteen. But by the time we reported this development to the social worker and the system kicked into gear, she would be an adult. In all the ways that mattered, she already was.

Not knowing what else to do, John and I pleaded while we watched her rip clothes off the hangers in her closet and throw them into a growing pile on the bed. The room was a museum of our time together. On her nightstand was the alarm clock John had bought her, which alternated between displaying the time and emojis of hearts, flowers, and smiles. On a dry-erase board was an old to-do list—a reluctant concession to my nagging. She’d picked the curtains to create the cave-like atmosphere she preferred. The furniture arrangement was probably the tenth iteration she’d tried as she sought her own elusive feng shui.

She doesn’t have enough luggage, I thought as I compared the size of the piles around the room to her two puny bags. It was a feeble argument, but it was the only one I had at that moment. We begged her to stay. We asked her to sleep on it. But she was determined.

“It’s not like I ever wanted to be here anyway!” she yelled.

This wasn’t the first time she had said this, and I certainly understood the sentiment. No kid wishes to be ripped away from their family and thrown in with random strangers. Still, I also knew that she had experienced moments of joy and love in our home, and that we had sown seeds of trust.

For all the inartful things we said to each other in that moment, it wasn’t her words that broke my heart. It was the emptiness that descended after she finally left that night. From the moment she had come to our home, no matter where I was—work, the grocery store, yoga class, out with friends—a part of my brain was always thinking about her: What was she up to? Was she OK? Was she feeling sad? Was she oversleeping? Had she eaten? And now, just like that, my raison d’être had been ripped away from me. My mission, my project, my new identity as a mama bear—all gone. I felt weightless without her to ground me. My space and days were all my own once again, but the lack of ballast made me feel like I might float away. I went for many walks by the river, reminding myself that a river is always everywhere at once—at the source, in the middle, and at the delta. I tried to remind myself that I, too, was both my loss and my undiminished capacity for love.

For days I kept the door to Ekin’s room shut. I couldn’t bear to see all that she had left behind. It was like a bad breakup times a thousand. Everything reminded me of her: Her water bottle. Her lunch bag. The last acai breakfast bowl in the freezer. Her hair clip. The medical soap in the shower. John’s sweater she liked to wear. Even the weather: When it was hot, I remembered how she hated the heat. When it rained, I remembered how she loved raindrops on her face.

Needing to get away from it all for a bit, I decided to travel to central California, where I had spent my twenties and where I still felt more at home than I did anywhere else. I visited friends and then spent a few days camping along the rugged Big Sur coastline. Even as I sobbed over my tragically brief tenure as a mom—eight months and twenty days—I came to see Ekin’s actions as a triumph. After months of being on her best behavior, acting sweet and agreeable and avoiding any conflict that might jeopardize her tentative status in the world, she’d felt secure enough to push us away. And as determined as I was to keep my expectations on a short leash, I let myself hope that Ekin would find her way back to us.

Next to that shy hope sat another, even smaller and shyer one: that I might still conceive and carry a child. It was a deranged idea, less likely to materialize than ever before in my life, but when I paused and listened, I found it in my heart—embarrassed, hidden, but always there whispering softly, You never know. Miracles are possible.

Maybe. But giving a safe and loving home to kids who needed it was definitely possible, so John and I got back to that.

When I returned home, there was no moody teenager glued to a bulky headset and a joystick, but a few days later three new kids arrived at our doorstep clutching their ragtag possessions: a thirteen-year-old boy who sneered at us with thinly veiled rage, a petite eleven-year-old with hair down to her waist, and a sturdy toddler on the girl’s hip. John and I wiped our social calendars clean, rearranged our home, and overnight became a family of five. Between the exhaustion and stress of juggling the needs of three children, we found many moments of joy: The four oldest of us screaming in unison on a long car ride to give the toddler a taste of his own medicine. The meals of bottomless pupusas and beef-tongue tacos. The epic hikes and predawn bike rides. Bodysurfing on overloaded floaties as the sun sank and jellyfish retreated for the day. Drippy brownie sundaes. Verbal jousting and just-for-fun arguments. Games of Uno and movie nights. There were also plenty of slammed doors, arguments, snarky comments, and “You are not my parents” conversations, but through some combination of patience, reason, bribery, and benign manipulation, we got through the days.

Somewhere in that blur of activity, my phone rang, and I saw Ekin’s name on the screen. Her voice was soft and sheepish as she asked if she could see us.

“How is half an hour?” I said.

We cried over Korean food and agreed that our last day together had not been our proudest moment. We also agreed that it was OK, and we would do better in the future.

And we do. Ekin is back to living with her aunt and cousin, but we remain her auxiliary kin. On Christmas morning we sit on the floor of our living room and open gifts. I hold her hand on her first flight since she was five. On Mother’s Day she brings me flowers and stays for breakfast, then leaves because she has two more bouquets in the car she needs to deliver. We root for the Caps at a hockey game and holler with laughter at stand-up comedy. John and I help her file taxes and manage bills. From time to time we weather a stretch of ghosting, and when it ends, we talk about how it feels to be ghosted. Occasionally I listen to her tell me about a problem and feel an urge to say that, as much as I love her, I don’t love the excuses she makes. But I know better by now than to think I can expedite the lessons she has to learn. And through it all, we all know we are here to stay in each other’s lives.

At my next gynecologist appointment, my doctor makes her argument once more: “A hysterectomy could improve your quality of life significantly. We’ve tried everything else.”

I hang on to her words all the way to the parking lot, where I sit in my car, holding the thought of surgery in my mind. It’s a bright winter day in suburban Virginia, nothing but flat, empty fields beyond the medical-complex parking lot. The promise of a life free of pain and bleeding is deeply alluring. I will turn forty-four in a few months. I am perimenopausal. My goal of giving birth to a child has evaded me for well over a decade, and its fulfillment is more unlikely at this point than ever before. And still, despite all this, I am not ready to give up. My stupid heart maintains its reckless capacity for hope.

A couple of months later I return to Big Sur, where I came to grieve Ekin’s departure a year ago. This is the temple I go to when I can afford to step off the treadmill to seek clarity and insight. As soon as I arrive, I walk to my favorite spot: a solitary outcropping overlooking a cove where a gnarly cypress with weathered bark clings to the cliff, its branches forever ticking like a metronome to the rhythm of the wind. I sit on a bench in the late-afternoon sun. The water is placid, a shimmering field stretching to infinity. I feel my body unwind, and as my breathing syncs with the steady roar of the surf, I notice a foamy geyser break the surface. Then another. Then several more. The glistening silver dome of a whale’s back arches across the water, swells and falls, swells and falls.

Just a few days ago I read that the presence of post-reproductive females within whale pods has been linked to higher survival rates among the pod’s offspring. By sharing knowledge accumulated over a lifetime, these no-longer-fertile females apparently contribute to the care and protection of the young.

Sometimes the universe is not subtle.

It’s time. The realization comes not as a gradual acceptance but as a sudden revelation. One moment I am grieving being deprived of an experience I’d thought was my birthright; the next, I am filled with certainty that I have grieved enough. I have dreamed stubbornly. I have pursued my goal of becoming a mom doggedly, through nearly a decade and a half of grief and disappointment, the clockwork indignity of every massive, fibroid-fueled cycle. My uterus has been the shadow dictator of my life, exerting control over many of my choices. I have tolerated it for so long because I believed it was my sole path to fulfilling my earthly purpose. I am finally ready to let go of this self-deception.

A normal uterus weighs about seventy grams and is the size of an egg; the tumor-riddled womb they removed from my body was ten times that, the size of a twenty-four-week fetus. I used to touch my curved belly and imagine I was pregnant. Now I touch it to remember I am free.

Six weeks after my surgery, my body is mostly healed. Ahead of a trip to visit family, I stop by the mall to buy gifts. By the time I walk into a jewelry store that was not on my list of stops, my hands are full. I circle the display cases and spot a delicate gold necklace with two interlocking hearts.

A salesman follows my gaze. “Who are you shopping for today?” he asks.

I hesitate. A part of me wants to say my daughter. It wouldn’t be the first time. Ekin and I did it routinely, both to feed our existential hunger and to simplify our relationship for the world. But being mother and daughter has been anything but simple for either of us, and today I find that I don’t feel like simplifying. I feel like honoring the complexity of our experience.

“For a young woman I love,” I say.

With this necklace, I want to give Ekin a daily reminder that she is loved, and not just by John and me but by all the people she has around her: her complex family, her friends and their parents, the good Samaritans who helped her navigate the foster care system, and even, probably, the woman who gave birth to Ekin when she was almost a child herself.

“I’m sure she’ll love this piece,” the salesman says. “Very subtle, versatile.”

I circle the display cases to shake the talkative salesman, but he follows me.

“Did they have any good deals at Nike?” he asks, nodding at the bags looped like bangles around my wrist.

“Found a few fun things for my nephew,” I say. “He’s going to his first basketball camp.”

The salesman nods approvingly. “And J.Crew?”

“Some clothes for my niece. She’s starting first grade.”

The salesman’s eyes light up. “Ah,” he exclaims, having finally found the right bucket for me. “You’re the childless aunt!”

Once upon a time, his words would have stung. The childless aunt. It’s not a particularly dignified title, not the status I had aspired to. But today the words feel like a gift—a grief-filled truth and a potential-filled starting place, one I can reclaim and redefine.

“That’s me,” I say. The childless aunt. The one whose empty nest frees her to give beyond her small, immediate circle.

The salesman raises his hand for a high five. I laugh and raise mine. Our palms meet.