Sunday, June 18, 2017

the "why" question

Sometimes, I really hate the word why.

Sometimes, why doesn’t have an answer and our reaction to that stark truth can run the gamut from mere annoyance to existential crisis. An unanswerable why rudely points out our human limitations—and who likes that? It can also ruin our nights, crush our days, and shadow our psyches. He’s a fun guy, that why.

 Sometimes, though, a why does have an answer but the question itself is inappropriate – and gutwrenching.

My husband and I are childless not by choice, and throughout our Adventures in Childlessness, I’ve developed an uncomfortably close relationship with the word why. He’s a constant companion, Mr. Why, yet he’s certainly no friend. He’s more of a stalker, GPSing my every emotion, detailing my every doubt. Wherever I am, he finds me because, as it turns out, Mr. Why is a shape-shifter too. Sometimes Mr. Why looks like a friend, sometimes an acquaintance, or, sometimes, a total stranger with a sudden need to ask me this, the pointiest of whys:

"Why don’t you have kids?"

Now it’s bad enough when Mr. Why bangs around inside my own head, but it’s seriously no bueno when he possesses another person with his peculiar brand of invasive curiosity and makes them say these particular words out loud.

Let me tell you a story and explain …… yes, I’ll say it ……. why.

Several years ago, we were new at this particular church and I decided to sing on the worship team because wouldn’t that bless everybody, blahdie blah blah. Turns out, Mr. Why was on the worship team, too, disguised as the woman singing alto. I met her for the first time at practice where there wasn’t much time for chit-chat, but on that Sunday, my very first Sunday onstage, with 5 minutes to go-time, she asked the dreaded question.

Now it’s worth noting here that any woman who has ever asked me this particular question becomes instantly suspect to me. Silently but swiftly, I put her on social probation—and that’s only if I’m feeling generous and my crankypants aren’t too tight. If the cross-examination is particularly aggressive, if there are endless follow-up questions, I'll write that woman off in a split second. POOF! Her smiling nosy self is dead to me. Any woman breaking and entering into my private house of pain triggers a blaring alarm in my head so earsplitting, so global, that it becomes forever associated with her in a Pavlovian way. I see that woman and hear primal screams echoing in my skull—forever.

We were onstage. In front of everyone. The church was filling up. She turned to me with a smile, unaware of the alarm she was about to trip, and said, “So do you have kids?”

“Uhm, no.”

“Oh? Reeeally?”

“Mm-hmmm."

 I drew that “hmmmm” out as long as I could, hoping to evade what was coming next. Because I saw it: That familiar flicker of curiosity in her eyes. The sudden change in the conversational weather. My jaw tightened.

“Oh! Why? Is there some kind of problem?”

And there it was. That word. The blaring global alarm. The primal screams inside my skull. I stared at her, doing my best to shoot daggers at her with my eyes, thinking that would quell her curiosity. It became a reflex for me, slipping on that mask of hardness, playing the role of a tough guy. If I focused on playing that part during these social break-ins, I found that most of the time, I could survive without dissolving into a puddle of public blubbering.

The car ride on the way home got pretty messy, though.

It was now 4 minutes to go-time. I strained to silence that global alarm, clear my head, but I did not strain to be nice -- I’ll admit it. I’m a Christian, but I see no scriptural call to be "nice." Kind, yes. "Nice," no. What lies behind my walls belongs to me, so I protect those walls as I see fit. In that moment, it doesn't matter one bit to me if I seem "nice."

I spoke to her from behind my stony mask. “Wow. You really cut to the chase, don’t you?”

“Well, I’m just interested. I mean, I’ve been there.”

I narrowed my eyes, mainly to fight back the pinch of tears, readjust my mask. The elastic of my insides suddenly soldered into one hard ball of contempt. That’s not pretty, I know. Just true. Here I was, standing in front of church mere moments from singing about the grace and love of Jesus and contempt was all I felt. My eyeballs felt very hot. I told myself to take deep breaths. And I sidestepped.

“Oh? Been where?”

“Well, we couldn’t get pregnant either and the elders laid hands on us and prayed and I ended up having Charlotte. Then a little later I had Scarlett. And now I just found out I’m pregnant again with another girl!”

(Please note: This is the only time I've used real names. These were their real names. What's left? Harlot?)

And with that, my ball of contempt morphed into a sudden urge to slug her. Maybe if I could just pound some courtesy and compassion into her skull -- you know, in front of the entire church and Jesus, exactly where those kinds of things should happen -- it would be a win-win situation. Except my hand would hurt. And Jesus would probably frown at me. And, okay, I suppose that’s not how people learn courtesy and compassion. But on its face, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Her buoyancy had sunk me like a stone. I had nothing to say after that. Or rather, nothing good to say. Because, really, this aggressive need-to-know about deeply personal and private things is a form of emotional invasion and I was at its mercy. Despite my outward calm, I felt under attack, grabbing any psychological weapons I could find, racing to my windows and doors to defend them no matter what the cost.

Besides the obvious and horrible nosiness problem with the why question—which is not obvious or horrible enough to enough people—the why question dredges up years of constant sorrow and loss in a single, unsuspecting second. That childless woman is a sudden deer in the headlights. Her private reproductive losses, carefully managed and sequestered, are instantly thrust to the forefront of her mind and heart, paralyzing her in every way. The asker becomes not a potential friend, but a marauder storming her personal walls, taking what isn’t theirs. That one word, uttered carelessly, slashes deep into a swollen vein of grief leaving the conversational victim slipping around in the bloody mess. While the assailant just walks away, unknowing, none the wiser, the childless woman stumbles away looking for the nearest cubbyhole to blubber into her hands.

And can we be honest? The why question stems from a place of curiosity, not a place of compassion. It’s not exactly a get-to-know-you question. It’s not a how-can-I-make-you-comfortable question. It’s more of a take-your-emotional-clothes-off-so-I-can-gawk question. When the why is asked by a person with kids – and it usually is – it forces the childless woman to name the very thing that widens, not shortens, the gap between them. It compels that woman to expose to a stranger how she and her husband are different from the vast majority of the population in the most basic, most elemental way. That kind of emotional incursion, masquerading as social nicety, is not bridge building or compassion creating; it’s bridge burning and compassion killing, all glossed under a well-meaning veneer of politeness.

This particular why question should be considered a form of emotional breaking and entering – something we just wouldn’t and shouldn’t do, something verboten. Just as we wouldn’t go over to our neighbor’s house uninvited, break in, and take the things that belong to him – not if we care about being law-abiding citizens, anyway – by the same token, we should always remember that any person we’re in conversation with lives in a separate emotional house from ours and unless and until we’re invited inside to share the things in their emotional house, acquiring those things in any other way is emotional theft. Just as we wouldn’t expect a total stranger on the street to invite us over for a lavish dinner mere moments after meeting us, we shouldn’t expect a childless person to allow us entry into the darkest, messiest room in their emotional house on first meeting -- nor should we try to smash a window to gain access to it, either. Both of those invitations, one to share joy, one to share sorrow, are outgrowths of time, trust, and intimacy.

We’re either invited in or we’re not and we need to be okay with that.

The why question, really, is a question that bubbles up from simple ignorance of the depths of the losses experienced by the woman on the witness stand – miscarriages, stillbirths, treatment failures, adoption failures – and because of that, the asker just doesn’t understand how to navigate these very personal conversational seas. Believe me, for the childless person, the grief over those losses, whatever they were, whatever they are, is always close to the surface. The childless are perpetual outsiders gazing through a window at the mainstream of life, and the isolation and judgment they feel can be acute. They are never not lonely, they are never not sad; there are simply varying degrees of those things at any given time, sometimes better, sometimes worse. The childless are a small minority in a child-full, child-obsessed culture that tends to see, understand, and celebrate only the majority. The lifelong trauma of their circumstance is something that requires constant emotional management and that unthinking knee-jerk question quite simply doesn’t help.

But back to my interrogator and her announcement of her various miracle pregnancies. Clearly, she didn't realize she was an emotional prowler, skulking about for easy entrance, which struck me as odd since she'd been through this herself. Then again, emotional intelligence is a spectrum, I guess.

I felt the low-hanging cloud of schadenfreude blow over my head. The voracious gleam in her eye seemed ready to gobble whatever I might blurt out, but I was numb, mute, thinking nothing but very un-Jesusy thoughts.

Scrambling for something brilliantly self-preserving to say, I finally hit on “wow.”

Yep.

“Wow” is what I said to her. (Don’t be jealous of my genius now. At least it wasn’t something else.)

But she seemed happy with “wow.”

“Yeah! So that’s what I’m talking about!”

“Mm-hmmmm. I see."

“So if you ever want to talk –”

I did not want to talk. Ever.

“Look,” I interrupted, punching back every word that really wanted to spew from my mouth. “I’m sorry to say this, but we’re, like, two minutes from singing. I don’t really know you and this is a pretty personal topic. I need to focus on worship. I’m sorry.”

Her eyes flew wide, but her mouth slammed shut. And the heavens rejoiced. Or maybe just me.

I was exhausted. Once it was all over, my soldered insides turned to jelly, shaking, shaking. A mere 2-minute interrogation had worn me out.

We never spoke of it again. I never invited her into my emotional house and she never tried to break in again.

Incursion quelled. Why silenced. Walls preserved.

 Emotional house: mine. As it should be.

Until I invite you in.