My best friend just had a baby. Her very first. It's pink and plump and tiny.
My sister is pregnant with her fourth, stomach swelling as we draw closer to October.
I always thought this would be something we would do together, an experience that we would share. Building a family, having children, being parents. With both Lucy and Louise. But I'm not straight. And that makes plans for pregnancy and babies a little bit more complicated. As I watch people around me become parents, I think more and more about my own relationship to children and whether I will ever have children of my own.
I recently read a wonderful graphic novel called Stone Fruit by Lee Lai that beautifully explores queer families and the role for queer people in children's lives. Nessie is the niece of the protagonist and is so loved and so cared for by her aunts. They play together and create worlds together and run wild together. They are such fundamental people for Nessie, and the joy she brings them is alive and visible on the pages of the novel.
In Feel Good, a netflix show I am currently bingeing, the main character Mae says that they see their unborn children in their female partner's eyes. Parenthood feels teasing sometimes. A physical impossibility with the bodies we have and the bodies we love. But that doesn't mean we don't see or feel the desire to have children or feel broody thinking of what our swirl of genes might look like.
When I saw Louise in London recently, she said that she wanted me to have a family and it made her sad to think that I might not have one. I told her that I would have family, it just might not look quite like how she would imagine a family to look. It might not be conventional or straightforward or free or even full of my own children, but there are options.
I still feel very young, I don't feel the pressure of the biological clock. Partly because I'm not sure what my journey to parenthood would look like and partly because I am just not ready for children yet.
There are a lot of people in the queer community (and the community at large) that do not want children and are very clear about it. Whilst I'm not making plans to visit a fertility clinic any time soon, I don't want to be shut off to the idea of ever having a baby.
When I first started properly dating women and thinking about the potential of spending my life with a woman, I thought a lot about what that would mean and what my future could and couldn't look like. I was in love, or infatuated, or in awe- still not entirely sure which one- and I wrestled with the idea of the nuclear family, of the dream of marriage and children in quick succession. And I realised, with conviction, that I didn't need that. That being with the right person for me and being happy and building a life together was worth what I might lose. That there is no guarantee, even with a strapping young virile-looking lad, that children come easily. And that wouldn't make a relationship less valid. And if I find a female partner and children do not happen, then that is okay. I don't just want to slot into a heterosexual relationship for the wrong reasons, I want to find someone who is right for me.
I went on a date last week to the beach with a beautiful girl. It was our second date and the conversation turned to expectations. What are we looking for, what do we want. And the subject of children came up. She said to me that she wasn't a hard no but wasn't a hard yes. And I think that's a good place to be. I'm not looking for someone rearing to go with big adoption or IUI plans. But I do want it as an option, I want the door to be open, whether it ever happens or not.
And I will have a family, whether that's a wonderful umbrella term for those I love in my life, or whether that looks like parents evenings and school pick-ups. And I will be there alongside Lucy and Louise as they raise their children. We will still do it together. And it will be a joy and a privilege to be in their children's lives and I hope that their children appreciate their slightly messy, slightly eccentric, rough-round-the-edges queer aunt. I will dance with them in the street and on the station platform. I will embarrass them and hold them and love them. And I will always be their family.
