The Children We Don’t Have

My great Aunt Agnes was an exceptionally large woman. Undoubtedly, her size contributed to my feelings of intimidation around her, but I think it was more her assertive and confident nature. She always knew what she wanted. I remember her bossing my great Uncle Albert around. By the time I was old enough to have real memories of them, he was in a wheelchair with MS, and life was already challenging for both of them.

Fondly referred to as Aunt Aggie, she always wore a lot of perfume. You could smell her as soon as she was within fifty feet of you. She always wore purple, especially on Sundays, when I would see her at church sitting in the second to last pew on the left-hand side. Before the service would start, my siblings and I would go over and say hi to her, all the while hoping to see her reach into her big old lady purse and pull out a Lifesaver or a Werther’s Original for each of us. Her purse was always well-stocked, and those Werther’s were my absolute favorite.

I don’t really remember my Uncle Albert talking much. I think most of my memories of him were in his last days. I do remember the night he died. We had gotten a phone call, mom walked next door to their house, and eventually came home and told us that he had passed. Up until that point, Aunt Aggie had been a caretaker. Now she was living alone.

Albert and Aggie never had kids of their own. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it was because of something physical or if it was a conscious decision. It’s one of those things I wish I had asked about, but didn’t.

I spent a lot of time with my Aunt Aggie after that. I suppose I would consider it my first paid work experience. I don’t remember how much she paid me, but I would regularly go over to her house and clean. I can still picture it so clearly. I would open the outside screen door, walk up the ramp in the entryway, knock on the wooden door, and then hear her yell, “Come in.” I would turn the knob and push really hard because the door stuck, and then I’d walk in, give her a hug, and get to work.

I would grab the can of Pledge and the dust cloth from under the sink. It always surprised me how quickly dust would accumulate in her house. Every time I cleaned, there was more. I would meticulously dust her shelves and her figurines—she had a lot of them—and I had to make sure I put them back exactly as they were. She would notice if something was even slightly out of place, and she would say something to me. At the time, I experienced that as pressure. Looking back, I see something else in it. A kind of care. A desire to hold onto order in a life that, like anyone’s, had its share of hardship.

Sometimes she would have a painting project out. She used acrylic paints on wood and was always making some kind of scenery or ornament, or painting a birdhouse. Occasionally she would let me paint with her, and that was always really relaxing. Other times we would make cookies. She had a very small kitchen, with not much space to work. Yet somehow we managed to make the best molasses cookies, and we always sampled them when they were done.

Looking back, she wasn’t particularly healthy. She ate a lot of frozen dinners from the Schwan man, and her fridge was always stocked with Mountain Dew, which I remember thinking was so strange for an older person. Of all the things you could drink, why Mountain Dew? Not coffee, not tea—just Mountain Dew.

Eventually, she had to go into a nursing home. She could no longer take care of herself. By that time, my life had taken me far away, and I wasn’t around much. I remember hearing that while she was there, she headed up the craft department, which sounded exactly like Aunt Aggie. She had always been that person, even at church, showing kids at Vacation Bible School how to make something new.

Before she passed, I went to visit her. She was lying in bed, sedated. I held her hand and cried and told her I loved her. At one point, she opened her eyes a little bit and looked at me, and I liked to think she could hear and understand me. A few days later, she was gone.

At her funeral, we were given the chance to speak. I stood up and shared how much I loved my great Aunt Aggie, and I said something that, at the time, just came out of me without much thought. I said that even though she didn’t have children of her own, she still had plenty of children in my cousins, my siblings, and me.

It’s funny the connections that we make in life, and the themes that come up without us even trying.

This week, I had Barbara Emmons from the Healthy Rhino on the North of Normal podcast, and I had been really looking forward to sitting down with her. I had this feeling that she had a powerful story to share, and I was right. At one point during our conversation, she started talking about adopting her son, and then she said, out loud, on air, to our entire community, that she was unable to have children.

You could hear it in her voice. It cracked slightly. She paused. I could see her eyes watering.

It’s a privilege to have people come on and be that open and vulnerable, and I try, as much as I can, to keep that space for them. I walk into that station every Tuesday telling myself, “Amanda, this is not about you today.” But in that moment, I had to remind myself of that more than usual. When Barbara said that, I felt a deeper sense of connection and a greater awareness of something I usually keep at a distance.

I can’t have children either.

It’s something I usually put out of my mind, because I don’t find it helpful to dwell on. My life is full in many ways. I have a sister with twelve children. I have a younger brother with eight… or is it nine? I have another brother with three. There is no shortage of children in my life.

I feel two different ways about it. Half the time, I feel grateful that I don’t have them (especially after holiday gatherings). And the other half of the time, I feel sad. But I don’t think the sadness is really about not having children. I think it’s about something harder to name.

There’s a sense that I will never fully understand my own parents and what they have been through in being a mother and a father. There’s a sense, whenever anyone talks about their children, that I won’t fully understand what that’s like. Not because I don’t try, but because I simply haven’t lived it.

Somewhere in all of that, there’s a quiet separation. I feel like an outsider looking in. 

After the conversation with Barbara, I was impressed by how quickly my mind went back to my Aunt Aggie. She didn’t have children either. And yet, when I think about her, I don’t think about what she didn’t have. I certainly don’t think of her as an outsider. I think about what she created.

I think about the way she showed up in her home and in her community. In her routines, and in the small details that mattered to her. I think about how she noticed when things were out of place, how she paid attention, and how she cared.

And I think about what I said at her funeral—that I felt like I was one of her children. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what I meant by that. It just felt true. Now, it feels a little clearer.

Family doesn’t always look the way we expect it to. It doesn’t always come through the paths we assume we’ll take or the roles we imagine we’ll fill. Sometimes it shows up in quieter ways, over time, through consistency and presence and care. Through showing up in someone’s life, again and again, in ways that might seem small in the moment but add up to something much bigger.

Barbara said something toward the end of our conversation that has stuck with me. When I asked her what she sees on the horizon, she told me she doesn’t really make plans like that anymore. Life has changed too many times. Too many things she couldn’t have predicted. So now, she just takes things one day at a time. She said she just wants to see the horizon, and to be grateful that she can see it. 

And that felt exactly right. 

-Amanda