by: Mary Vermillion
My younger sister must have been in
junior high when she told me how many
children she wanted. Six. And bless her heart, she continued to want six until
she had four. Yes, ours is a Catholic family. But in Atlantic, Iowa, even the
Protestants had lots of children. My best friend, a Lutheran, was the
second-to-the-youngest of six. I was the oldest of four. How many kids did I
want? Zero.
When I thoughtlessly shared this
desire with my mother, she said the same thing she would say to me years later
when I came out to her as a lesbian: Oh,
you’ll change your mind.
But I knew I wouldn’t. I knew that
I’d never want kids and that this made me odd-girl-out. Mostly, I savored the
role of rebel outsider, but because I was raised Catholic, sometimes I also
wondered if something was wrong with me. Yet I can’t blame all my angst on the
Church. Science also had a hand. When I studied evolution, I realized that I lacked
a basic biological impulse. If the rest of humanity were like me, we would soon
be extinct!
