Hi friend,
With every parenting choice, the ripples spread out from everything we do or refrain from doing, and the ripples never end. You can’t get too obsessed with every individual choice; if you do, you’ll just drown. Some choices feel bigger, more fundamental, than others, like whether to have kids at all and if yes, how many kids to have.
I am firmly in the “one and done” camp when it comes to children. I love my kid, and I know I am selfish about my personal time and space. I’m introverted and I like being in control of my environment. The way I see it, I could be a pretty decent mom with some spare energy and patience to give — or I could be a way more frazzled, bitter, resentful, tired mom. I’m not being self deprecating, just honest, when I say, no one likes me when I am stretched too thin. It’s not pretty! It’s not nice!
There’s a lot of cultural baggage about only children. For the most part, it doesn’t affect me. I’m an only child and I’m good with it. I feel no twinges of guilt or envy when friends announce pregnancies and have multiple babies. (Quite the opposite, I often have to hold back unhelpful comments like, ARE YOU INSANE?) Sometimes I wonder if my child would be happier with a sibling. But then, what would she and I both be giving up?
While walking to preschool with my daughter the other day, we held hands. As we waited for our turn to cross the street, she looked up at me and smiled.
"Mommy, I am so glad you are taking me to school today!" she said.
"Oh yeah?" I smiled back at her.
"Yeah, it's what I wanted." She nodded to herself, suddenly looking very serious.
"I'm glad," I said, and squeezed her little hand.
"Yes, yes," she said, "I love it when it's just us, you and me."
"Just us?"
"Just us, you and me, Mommy, just us, just us!"
That’s it for me, right there. It’s enough. More than enough. It is my great and solemn hope that we can keep this kind of bond as she grows up. It will change but I want to hold on to it.
—IKM
Creative Juice: Dear Mili
The war in Gaza and constant presence in the news of stories centered on the horrors of violence — the murder of children, especially — have brought my mind often to a book I read in my childhood. I’ve never seen it on any friend’s bookshelf, nor at the library, but I do have a copy.
The book is called Dear Mili. It’s illustrated by Maurice Sendak, giant of children’s literature and son of Jewish parents. Revisited through my adult eyes and the knowledge that many members of Sendak’s family were murdered during the Holocaust, the lush, highly symbolic detailed illustrations and somber text of this fairy tale feel new, and urgent, in this moment of mass chaos, horror, and collective trauma.
The text of Dear Mili is a translated story from Wilhelm Grimm. In it, a single mother lives in a cottage with her beloved daughter. Her other children have died, so the two are alone together. The child is beautiful and good. The mother sees fire in the sky and knows a war is raging. Desperate to protect her child, she sends her away to hide in the forest. The little girl meets a kind old man living in a hut in the woods, and shelters with him, during which time she helps him and makes food for them both to share. Unbeknownst to her, he is a saint who is there on Earth to protect her. After three days have passed, she returns to her house to find her mother has aged, and each day she spent away was actually a decade. The mother and child rejoice in finding each other again, and die peacefully together.
It’s a book for children, and also, very much not for children. Like all my favorite picture books, it has incredible, evocative illustrations that fascinated me when I was young, and a story that now makes me absolutely lose it as an adult. The images add so much depth and dimension to this simple fable, these characters without names, who could be any mother and child, desperate to survive any war.
Depending on the news media you consume, the push to dehumanize and erase the suffering of entire categories of people is so strong, almost impossible to resist.
Yet, it is possible. For civilization to exist, it is required.
Watch a half hour video here, from artist Benjamin Schipper, covering the whole book in depth. Buy a copy for the children in your life.
Side quests
“Onlies” don’t seem to be any worse off than kids with siblings. So why do stereotypes about them persist? Only children on growing up without siblings. Choosing to be child free. Maurice Sendak’s fantastic imagination. Maurice Sendak: 'I refuse to lie to children'
If you're an only child, you spend a lot of time by yourself, and you develop a strong ability to entertain yourself, to conjure up fantasy.
—Peter Jackson