Reflections from a Barren Womb: God is in the Details

"After 30, I think (if you have any sense at all) you begin to contemplate your mortality more. You begin to be aware that your youth is, by and large, behind you, and your days are far more limited than you ever imagined. The days are long, but the years are short, and there's terribly little time left to do what you think is important. I can understand, now, the reason why some people choose to have children--they say they want to live on. I had always thought that was an arrogant statement; after all, what's so special about us that we should live on? And who is to say that our kids will be like us? Now I know, it's not that our personalities themselves live on; in our children, a tiny portion of ourselves does continue on, to carry on our work and our lives, or rather, their own variation of it.

Those of us who still opt out of child-bearing, therefore, are working with a more limited time frame. All we've got is this life, however much or little of it is granted to us, with no accommodating offspring to carry it on. So we've got to work harder, and faster, to make our lives as fabulous and wondrous as possible. Without children to give our lives profound meaning, we have only what we can generate with our own hands and minds and spirits and hearts. And maybe all we generate will be small things, quotidian things that are unremarkable to all but ourselves. Perhaps our fulfillment will come from little selfish luxuries as we carry on what others may see as a pointless, childless existence.

But god is in the details, yes?

This is a quote from a letter I've been writing, on and off, over the past few days. It will be sent to a friend of mine, back in Indiana. I love writing letters; I can express so much more through my words on paper. Plus, there's some really beautiful stationary out there! Back before I moved to Indiana and got all burdened down with the nonsense of adulthood, I wrote religiously to a friend of mine. I would savor his letters; back and forth, we would wax philosophical, in the most delightfully unselfconscious way. Whenever I would sit down to write him a letter, I would light a candle, put on some music, haul out some stationary, and the words would flow. It was tn intensely spiritual experience for me; it is one that perhaps I should try to take up again. This time I shall add a glass of wine to the mix, and once more savor the candlelight and the scratching of the pen as word by word, I draw closer to my own essence, and hopefully closer to my recipients.

God is in the details, yes, but god is also in the relationships of those around us--not just with our children, but with our other family, our spouses, our colleagues, our friends past and present. The only immortality I need is in the ink of a pen.