Small talk

I spent a fair bit of time at a Christmas cocktail party on Saturday explaining to someone I don't know all that well why we're not pursuing adoption.

It was surreal. As other people's children milled about and groups of people chatted and laughed, I stood by the crab dip trying to make him understand.

Because he asked. And I'm sure when the answer he wasn't expecting met his ears he was instantly sorry that he did. I saw him recoil, just a tiny bit, as his eyes widened in horror.

Not, I don't think, because my answer was, "No, we're not adopting", but because he suddenly realized he'd put me in a position that would require me to justify a childless existence. Because most people don't live that way. Clearly. All you had to do was look around the room.

It's so unfathomable to people. They want us to have children. They want us to be parents to a living child, and they think that if the answer doesn't lie in my uterus, it must lie somewhere else. And I get that, I do, but unfortunately, it's just not that easy. Not for us, for reasons I'm sure we could never properly articulate to anyone's satisfaction if we tried.

Maybe we're wrong. Maybe we're absolutely totally wrong to have made this decision. And maybe we'll change our minds one fine day. But for right now, this is what is right for us, no matter what you think.

No matter what the man beside the crab dip thinks either.