The child I never had

The choice to have a child cannot be unmade, and at a certain age you lose the chance to choose at all.

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My friends’ son Felix, age two. February 2021.

I’ve deleted every image of my past life from my phone—except one.

It’s a video of my former niece, at age two, in my former living room. She’s turned an empty box into a slide and is gleefully hurling herself down headfirst, shrieking with delight. It makes me laugh to watch it, but I rarely do. I keep it, I think, as evidence that she once existed in my life at all.

When a marriage ends, a spouse becomes an ex. But there are no terms for a former niece, for all the precious people who vanish along with the marriage. She was simply a part of my life—until she wasn’t. Two winters passed before I could say her name without crying.

She was born on the same day as my friends’ son Felix, and I watched them grow in parallel, comparing each milestone and remarking on the differences between them. Who walked first? Him. Who talked first? Her. She chattered like a parrot while he tore around like a tank.

Watching their small lives unfold in perfect symmetry felt like a rare glimpse into what might have been. I marveled that a flick of fate can send your life spinning in an entirely different direction. What if my niece had been a boy instead of a girl? What if she were my daughter instead of my niece? Sometimes the lives you might have lived draw so close that you can reach out and touch them.

But now, half of the pair was missing. I watch Felix grow and imagine my niece at each age. He’s nearly four now, so she is too. She’s lived half her life without me. Would she have skied with me like Felix does, like I did with my own father at his age? Would she have nestled in my lap to read Corderoy, like I did with my mother?

On the days I missed my niece most, I’d walk for hours in Greenwood Cemetery, pouring my pain out on film. We too often stuff grief down instead of giving it space to breathe. But mourning is a sacred act of attention, a bittersweet marking of the space love left.

I loved her fiercely, and I mourned her like the child I never had.

Greenwood, May 2021. The small toys break me every time.

When I was younger, I had just assumed I’d be a mother. My own mother loved raising a child. She sent me to school each day with a thermos of hot mac and cheese and a sweet cartoon drawn on a paper napkin for me to decode: eye heart ewe.

I left New York at 35 and returned at 38 and in that time nearly everyone I knew had children. I enjoyed my friends’ kids and gladly sat in the back seat with them on road trips, playing peek-a-boo and naming the color of cars. I loved how their small faces lit up when they saw me, their hilarious prattle about bulldozers and sparkly shoes. I cherished the morning snuggles and the demands for one last book at bedtime.

In short, I loved all the perks of being an aunt, but as I observed the tradeoffs of parenting up close, I felt increasingly ambiguous about motherhood itself.

I saw Felix recently, and we flopped on the floor to play Hungry Hippos while my friends talked on the couch. Felix has grown chatty these days, and he narrated each ball his hippos ate while the adults discussed the relentless grind of parenting in a pandemic. I tilted the board in his direction, just a little, to help him win. When it was time to go, he hugged me so hard that he nearly knocked me over.

I loved seeing him—and I returned to my apartment with a sign of relief. I lit candles and said a small prayer of thanks for the silence. Everything was where I left it. Nobody needed anything from me. I could hear myself think.

This, more than anything, is the silver lining of my loss: the newfound freedom to tend to nobody’s needs but my own. I live for the unscripted days, the stillness to let my thoughts unspool. I cherish the unbroken time to create, to explore the edges of my emerging identity and my art.

I am carefully nurturing a new creative life, as precious to me as any child.

Felix at age two. February 2021.

Parenthood is one of life’s few unalterable choices. Most everything else can be undone: you can change jobs, change cities, change relationships. But having a biological child is a hard binary—you either are a mother or you aren’t. The choice cannot be unmade, and at a certain age you lose the chance to choose at all.

I’m 40 now, and that time is nearing, if not already passed. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the life I didn’t choose, or that didn’t choose me, in the photos I take of Felix as he grows. My almost-life is always with me.

At my age, most discussions touch on kids somehow, either the exhaustion of children you do have or the anguish of children you don’t. But there is also a quieter conversation happening, one with women who are childless by chance or design and who consider the matter settled.

They sidle up to me at parties, voices low in confidence, and say: “You too? Has your life branched like mine? Are you also free for impromptu walks in the park and bikes to the beach? Are you free to pop by a gallery, to chat about writing, to take that glass-blowing class we’ve always meant to try?”

“Are you also free to create, and re-create, any life you choose?” they ask.

“Yes,” I reply, “I am.”

Felix at age three. February 2022.

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Liz is a writer and photographer based in Brooklyn. She’s spent her career finding the right words for others and now she’s finding her own.