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Families are in fashion
She feels so good, so happy — so important! And what girl doesn't, when she's having her first baby?
■ In years gone by, if you wanted to get June Ally son dewy-eyed, all you had to do was strike up a conversation about babies. Now that she's going to have one of her own, you haven't a chance at any conversation, because she does all the talking.
June is consumed by wonder, excitement, and most of all, curiosity. Her friends who have babies are called to the phone daily. "Hello. June," they say, as soon as they lift the receiver.
"How'd you know it was June?"' the husbands want to know.
The wives smile. "It's always June. She has a new question every day."
"Why? You're not her doctor."
And the wives smile tolerantly. "I'm something better than that, in a way. I'm a woman who has had a baby, and to another woman, I'm an encyclopedia on the subject."
Small wonder that June is excited. For five years she and Dick have wanted this to happen. Every time a friend had a baby, June spilled over with enthusiasm, solicitude, and eventually envy, for it gave her the feeling of being incomplete. Occasionally she would see a picture in a newspaper of a man and wife and a parcel of children, and she would sigh as she put down the paper and stared off into space. Why couldn't it ever happen to her?
"Life means nothing without my children, for through them, each day Jess and I discover new wonders . . ."
■ After I had my twins, Gregory and Timothy, friends would ask, "Well, don't you feel different now?" I didn't. I sensed what they meant, that when a girl becomes a mother a whole change is supposed to take place in her. But it hadn't for me. Soon I was back working at the studio, and when I came home each night things were the same except that we had two babies. There was a nurse who would bring them in to me. I would get a full report on their day. I would hold and cuddle them. Then they would be carried back to the nursery and I would sit back knowing that something was wrong.
Something was missing but I didn't know what. I tried my best to figure it out and couldn't. One night I almost got it. I was sitting with Jess after dinner. The babies had been in and were gone again, and that same feeling was on me. Only this time it was worse. Suddenly, without expecting to, I burst into tears.
"I'm not their mother!" I cried. "I'm no good around here!"
It was quite a little demonstration and after it was over we analyzed the outbreak very scientifically, and incorrectly. We concluded it was just a belated emotional effect of a pregnancy that had been rather an easy one. You know, things have to balance up one way or another; I was experiencing some of the