My Mother Says I Should Have a Baby in Berlin

Just because the Kinder clothes are so darn cute.

She has a point.

All the other ladies are doing it. You should see Prenzlauer Berg — pop-out bellies and old-style prams thrust down cobblestone streets. Toy stores everywhere. Worse than Park Slope. For untold reasons, the neighborhood has the fastest-growing number of children under 3 in Berlin. Compare the fecund birth rate — 2.1 kids per woman — to Germany's steeply declining one: 1.36.*

I can see the appeal. It's a district full of trendy cafes and shops along with plenty of green space. You get the perks of city living plus the kind of play space and Kinder-care the U.S. usually reserves for its suburbs.

Should I get busy? I really really really DO want a baby. Never been a question. Just, um, maybe not this second...?

Also, it would be nice to have a man attached. Not necessary. But.

*                *            *

On July 25th, my dear friend Coley birthed her third boy. I flew to Evanston on the 29th to serve as BFF and post-labor doula. Her husband headed to New York on a business trip; her older boys stayed at grandma's.

On the second day Coley took some private time (read: long shower), and Sam was all mine. He was fussing, so I walked him 'round the living room, singing the only words of the only lullaby I could remember: Schlaf, Kindchen Schlaf. Der Vater hüt die Schaf. Die Mutter schüttelt's Bäumelein. Schlaf, Kindchen Schlaf.

I sang it over and over until he fell asleep. Then I took him outside. We rocked in the wicker rocker on the front porch, Sam's bendy body swaddled tight, his face pillowed in my chest. I kissed his hot head. I had a sudden rush of something — not longing exactly, not knowing either — but something bigger, something of the both. It rippled through my body, left me warmed, tears throat-caught.

"Okay, G.," I whispered into Sam's scalp. "This. Please." I breathed the baby in. "No more sick time? Chapter closed? Now: Berlin, the book. Then...This. Okay?"

I am aware that it's not up to me, big things like the course of my illness, and meeting a soul-mate, and fertility and such. I have my plans for me, and the universe, or whatever it is — I call it the big G. for simplicity's sake — has its plans for me, and those are the ones that stick. Still, putting in an earnest word for what I want never hurts. Especially when using a five-day-old-miracle as a communications device.

I'm also aware that the window of my fertility is inching shut. Funny, I thought everything would be taken care of by 27. I'd be married, building a family. My first book would be published, I'd be a literary name. Here I am 35 and... Hil-arious.

Not sure how I landed on 27. Maybe the age my mother married Pops? I might have met my goal if only I'd stayed put. Love blossomed, for the first time, in Berkeley at 26. Jud, 6-foot-4 sculptor-boy; crystalline eyes, weepy temperament. Romance was sweet but soggy. I dashed off to Europe for two months, and while Jud grew ever more certain I was The One, I made up for many years' lost time (that box o' fear again). Youth-hostel clerk in Bangor. 18-year-old in Dublin. Filipino-American on the ferry to France. Ex-pat in Prague. Missoula native amidst the Greek Isles. As my friend Steve lovingly put it, "Lilan does Europe."

It was Jud who, in a misguided moment of generosity, had suggested we have a (somewhat) open relationship while I traveled. He'd done the Let's Go Europe thing, so he knew how it could be. He just didn't know how very ambitiously I'd seize upon his offer. Not that I wasn't torn in two by my choices. Especially after a phone call mid-trip, when he confessed the depths of his devotion, and I, being entirely unversed in the art of love, blurted out my transgressions. "You could have waited till you got back," Julie pointed out. Oops.

The week I returned, Jud fled to Burning Man, where he promptly met his future wife. Now they live in the country somewhere with a handful of kids.

Don't get me wrong. I don't regret what I did. Nor dwell on the deadline that I missed. There were plenty of reasons to break it off. And New York City had been calling to me all the while.

Still, funny how I keep doing this. Choosing adventure over love. Freedom over commitment.

Don't know how else to jog the writer in me awake. Guess I'm also waiting for the day when the two can be one.

As for my initial impression that Prenzlauer Berg is the place for me — once my seashell-themed sublet ends — I'm reconsidering. There's something in the air. So they say.

Oh, and The Moms was kidding. I think.

*Source: Time Out Berlin 2007

Comments

[jess]

hmmmm.... i feel pensive. thanks for sharing these sneak peeks into the mind and heart of lilan. wishing you the best,
jess again, your new literary fan :)

[Julie]

Did I say that??? I guess I'm smart about those things, though maybe you were smarter -- maybe he needed time to chew over the news on his own, before you got home. Maybe you needed the truth to be OUT.

Be careful with that Rolodex of past loves -- I've spent a lot of time at different times in my life flipping through that one. But the regrets scribbled in the margins are written in an ink that eventually fades, yes? I think so.

I so RELATE to your story about holding Sam. The baby I held that did that to me was a little older -- and I refer to that moment as babycrack -- I held her, and I just HAD to have one, in a way I hadn't ever felt. Granted that was in February 07, and look what happened in March!!!???

I think you've got a good plan going (Berlin, Book, Partner, Pregnancy) -- and if any of those things came out of order, well that would be fine too. I have utmost faith in you, your divinity, your path.

[Lilan]

Perhaps excessive, the navel gazing. Thanks for reading nonetheless. Don't worry, the Rolodex is CLOSED. The edit hopefully shows that! Who know s what was right, tell him then or not...but it was interesting to learn I had options. Thank you for your faith in me.