I also wonder if at times it’s a defense mechanism to not desire mom-hood so strongly. Feeling out of the wifehood loop can be painful enough; adding the reality of being out of the mom-hood loop could possibly push me over the edge emotionally – so I just don’t allow myself to feel that. Also, as women, so many other doors have opened for us over the past generation or two – from career to travel to ministry opportunities – that perhaps the longstanding door of becoming a mom holds less enticement. Mostly, however, I think motherhood just feels so “other” that it’s tough to picture, let alone yearn for, this life stage. Most of the things that make singleness great – freedom to travel, supreme control of everything from our Daytimer to the remote, time to invest in a wide array of friends, ministry pursuits, and career opportunities – would be seriously impaired if not erased if we became a mom.

That’s not to say that those of us with the Waning Maternal Urge don’t love kids and want them someday. I became an aunt last year and love my little nephew to pieces. As I write this I’m planning to fly to see him (and his parents and grandparents, of course!) next weekend, and I can hardly wait to lay eyes and hugs and countless kisses on the little guy. Often when I spy cute kids or hang out with my friends’ offspring, I think of a line from "Mad About You" when the main characters, Paul and Jamie, were at the pre-parenting stage. Once when they were visiting some relatives, Jamie told Paul, “Your niece is so cute it makes my uterus hurt.” There are days I so get that, when I long for a little person to love on, care for, tuck into bed, and teach about everything from Jesus to shopping.

Mostly what I feel as a thirty-four-year-old single woman is a sincere hope that motherhood will be an option for me someday. That I’ll get a chance at one of the most amazing of women’s unique abilities: birthing new life. That there’s a father-of-my-children in my future. That he’ll show up before all my eggs go kaput. I’ve watched my sister and others go through infertility, so I know there are no guarantees at any age. And an OB/GYN friend of mine assures me that due to medical advances and the miracle that is our bodies, by and large, women even well into their forties needn’t worry too much about fertility issues. But a niggling worry persists. Mostly in that very American part of me that sees biological motherhood as some sort of inalienable right and that will be altogether indignant (and grief stricken) if I’m denied what seems to come so easily to others, even unsuspecting teenagers in backseats of cars.

I read a chick-lit novel several years ago called Dating Big Bird in which the main character, a still-single woman, described the ticking biological clock not as sand in an hourglass (which can simply be turned over when it’s run out) but as a big gumball machine with a limited number of gumballs slipping out one by one. Once they’re gone, that’s it. No more eggs. No more chance for a baby. Sometimes, when I spy a cute kid, or watch a meaningful mother-child moment, or just for no foreseeable reason whatsoever, the maternal pang hits and I feel like a grubby, penniless kid with my nose pressed against the glass of that gumball machine, eyeing the slowly disappearing treats, hoping for the needed “currency” before they’re all gone.