After John left, I had the pretty stark realization that when he left, he also took a year and a half of my life with him which now put me just shy of 40 and further away from my late thirties. It made me sad in ways all over again because when I had made the decision to start dating again, I had done so because I wanted to get married again, I wanted my children to get a father figure in their life and I wanted to have one more baby. I wanted my family dream that I have had since I was little and to my core, I have always wanted a happy traditional family because I think it is important for a woman to have a husband and I think it’s important for children to have two parents.
Between the tears I cried over John that summer, I also found anger too. Anger towards him for taking all that time from me with no intention of having a life with me even though he knew from the very beginning a life with someone was what I wanted and up until that night in my driveway, he had led me to believe that he had wanted that with me too even telling me things like he could never leave me and that he didn’t really understand it but when the kids and I weren’t around, life felt weird. In the end, I guess it was what guys do—feed you a bunch of lines of things they know you want to hear. When I would get to that thought, the anger would become a new level of hurt all over again and new tears would come. It was a very hard summer.
Towards the end of it, I found myself in the same spot I was in when I had decided to start dating again. I started thinking how I could make my family be what I had always wanted it to be without a man involved in it. I was excited that my job with the state had ended because it meant that I would be eligible to be a foster mom if I chose to be. Only after nearly two years of working with kids in the system, I pretty quickly realized that I did not want to be a mother to a kid that had been in the system, and I did not want to deal with the constant presence of a social worker in my life until the adoption was finalized.
I thought back to earlier times in my life where I wasn’t convinced that God was leading me to physically create the children that I knew in my heart I wanted, and I thought back to private adoption. It had been something that I had looked into briefly before Phil and I had gotten married, and I remembered how expensive it all was outside of the cost of raising another child on my own. It was not going to be a viable option for me. Which then led me to googling sperm banks in the quiet of my bedroom after my children had gone to sleep and what I continued to do the following morning when I got to work. I was pretty invested in it when my co-worker came in to check in.
“What are you doing,” she asked.
I shut my laptop and looked up at her. “Good morning. Promise not to laugh?”
“Maybe?” She sits down in front of my desk and eagerly awaits my explanation of what I am so engrossed in.
“Sperm donation.” I flip open my laptop and show her the website.
She doesn’t laugh. “You must have an interesting search history,” she adds as she starts scrolling through the list of potential options.
“Oh, never look at the search history of a widow. In the early days, I was so obsessed with what was happening to Phil’s body that I was constantly researching body decomposition because I couldn’t fathom the idea that he was dead let alone no longer Phil and, in the ground, becoming a skeleton.”
“And now you are here. You have had an interesting life.”
“I guess you could call it that.” I take back my laptop. “It surprised me how easy it is to knock yourself up if you decide to.”
“You know most people find a friend that they trust and make some sort of arrangement for this kind of thing.”
“No, if I must do it alone, then I will do it alone. And look how easy it is. For up to $1500 you pick your baby daddy and how good of a sample you want or need, they send it to your house or to your doctor in your ovulation window and bam you try to knock yourself up.”
“That is very…expedited. Are you going to do it?”
“I don’t know, I think it is kind of weird and I still hold out hope that I do meet someone, but now I am even more afraid of allowing someone around me and my kids for them to get attached to a man again only for him to decide he doesn’t want us.” I grab a tissue and dab away the fresh tears that have come.
“You’re not ready for this if you want my unsolicited opinion.”
“You’re right, I’m not, but at least I am starting to think about it.” She nods. “And then I also think about my luck with things. Knowing me, I would commit to doing this, knock myself up and then meet the man of my dreams and have to explain how I got pregnant.”
She laughs. “That would happen to you, yes.”
“And then he wouldn’t want to deal with that level of crazy and I would once again get hurt and become a hermit with my three and a half kids.” I exhale and force myself to stop tearing up. “Then I also think about that episode of The Golden Girls where Blanche’s daughter decides to go to a sperm bank to get pregnant and every time, she has to say sperm back, she cringes and whispers it all awkward.”
“That’s a pretty good episode. I also like the one when she has the baby and Blanche keeps calling the baby Oreo.”
I chuckle. “I always thought it was weird that she had a son named Skippy but made fun of her daughter for Aurora.”
She agrees. “Maybe look into having your eggs frozen and then that way if you do meet someone you bought yourself back some time.”
“I don’t know what’s weirder to me, a sperm bank baby or a petri dish baby.” I grab another tissue and dry my leaking eyes. “Alright, enough of this, I have to get it together to get through the day.”
My co-worker offers to make some coffee and I gladly accept it, eager to be away from my depressing thoughts about the state of my life and the weird things I find myself looking into.
When I was younger, I used to like that my life wasn’t planned out and that the uncertainty of life brought with it exciting surprises, but now after being widowed and after John, I found myself not liking that aspect of life so much and I really began to crave comfort and consistency. And I had begun to realize that as much as a good relationship brings that, you can also bring it to yourself. I began to out more things into God’s hands by the end of the summer and began to truly believe he does have a plan for me even if it meant I was alone with my kids for the rest of my life. It just hurt to think about it that way, never getting to have a husband or raise our child together along with my kids I had with Phil. The loneliness of it all really began to sting even though I knew I was going to figure it out either way in the end even if it meant, a sperm bank.
When I had received this galley, I was not aware that I was part of a series. The Southern Side of Paradise is actually the final installment of the Peachtree Bluff Series which focuses on a mother, Ansley and her three daughters: Caroline, Sloane and Emerson as they divide their time between New York City and Georgia. Each are struggling in terms of their relationships: Ansley is engaged to the love of a her, a man that she left when she was young while Caroline has discovered that her husband James has been cheating on her and Sloane is dealing with her injured husband who is back from being captured during the war.
When I was in my early 20’s, I broke up with my high school/college sweetheart and packed up my life for a semester abroad in Paris. I am all about books that take me back to Paris, especially those that are about a newly single woman navigating her new world in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. I was so excited when I received the galley for Sarah Morgan’s One Summer in Paris.
Katherine Kuzma-Beck 