When I was just about to graduate from university and ready to embark on a career, I remember telling my father that he shouldn’t expect any grandchildren. Ever. Favoring the prospect of a carefree life, I resolved to be childless. I was going to follow my every whim and fancy, making it impossible for me to be bound to a band of sniveling brats. 

Other women I knew were aspiring to “have it all.” My type-A friends weren’t going to let their expensive educations go to waste. They were upwardly mobile on career paths that included corporate lunches and billable hours. They would reside in white-picketed fence neighborhoods, employing gardeners and housekeepers. Family photo shoots would be booked in picturesque locations, coastal or alpine depending on the season. For some, their dreams really did come true. 

Though part of me desperately wanted to share in this vision of professional success and privileged domestic bliss, I have never been inclined to “dream big.” Apart from graduating and landing my first job, I had no other ambitions. If I dreamt at all, the lifestyle I envisioned would be a bohemian one. I fancied being part of an intellectual collective, deeply committed to the arts and philandering. I’d have an apartment in a drab part of a European town, cook food on a dirty plug-in element, cover my windows with silk sheets, and wear a kimono all day long. As it turned out, I was never cut out for either the picket fence or boho nonconformism. Too lazy for one, too uptight for the other. 

* * *

I recently admitted to my daughters that I never planned on becoming a mother. Keeping secrets is not my forte. If I were an international spy, no coercion or torture would be needed before I spilled the beans. My instinct is to share. Every topic is worthy of conversation or, more importantly, gossip. Though my disclosure is bristling news, my daughters are now both young adults and well acquainted with my habits and preferences. At best, they barely paid attention to my confession. At worst, they are scarred with permanent feelings of rejection that no amount of therapy will cure. 

We have a lot of different feelings for the child whose conception is something of a miracle. Such children can be the apple of their parents' eyes. They can hold the coveted and pampered position as the “favourite.” There’s plenty of these kids out there. The last child who is significantly younger than the other siblings. The last child who appears even after daddy got the snip. The last child who arrives nine months after you were both sick in bed with the flu and the other kids were at school. Often referred to as “our little surprise” or “the oops,” these children are beloved, though entirely unexpected. 

I did not expect either of my children, so you might think I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t read any books. I didn’t attend any workshops. At the time of my first pregnancy, I didn’t have any friends who were mothers. My own mother had passed away, so I didn’t have a role model to count on. How on earth did I learn to be a mother? I owe everything to television. 

* * *

Growing up, my mother plopped me in front of the television promptly at ten every morning. There, I stayed for a one-hour daily dose of Sesame Street. The opening theme song to the show is a catchy little number with a chorus of children singing, “Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?” This rhetorical question is a cruel misnomer and can create distressing confusion. At the time, I thought Sesame Street was real and it would be a nice place to visit. Sadly, no one ever took me. 

People who live on Sesame Street greet each other by name and are really friendly. The Grouch is an exception because he is always in a bad mood, but strangely, people aren’t afraid of him. Occasionally, he’ll even sing a musical number. Anyone who can break out into a jaunty little ditty can’t be all that bad. 

Even before I was enrolled in kindergarten, I noticed a stark difference between the close knit community depicted on television and the sprawling suburban loneliness where I was trapped. We hardly spoke to our neighbors and only knew a few by name. No one sat on their front porch smiling or waving, and no one ever stopped by for a chat. My neighborhood could be compared to an abandoned movie set considering how little human activity there was. 

Corporations try to garner consumer loyalty by inserting the constant presence of their products into our lives. Years ago, a prominent cola company tried to secure a contract to put a drink machine in every high school in my district, but a grade ten student was hip to their game, took them to court, and stopped their shenanigans. Sesame Street is far less nefarious in its capitalist intentions than a soft drink company, but the effects of branding—or brainwashing—as a consequence to exposure worked wonders on me. 

Watching the routines and social interactions on Sesame Street indoctrinated in me a set of community values that became the guiding principles for the direction of my life and ultimately, how I raised my children. When I grew up, I wanted to live where the “air was sweet” and “where doors would open wide” for happy people like me.  

* * *

My mother, God bless her soul, had a kind and gentle disposition. Easy to laugh and willing to listen, people immediately felt comfortable in her presence. Within minutes of being introduced, they’d pour out their heart and soul to her. Yet, looking back at my childhood and the short time I knew her, I am convinced she was deeply unhappy. Having immigrated from Jamaica to Canada in the early 1960s, as a young woman, she set out to have a life of stylish independence, making decisions that were fulfilling for herself and no one else. 

By the time she met my father, also Chinese-Jamaican, she was already in her mid-thirties, and approaching the age of a spinster for the time. My father turned out to be a bully who was unpredictable in his anger and violence. To this day, I firmly believe they should have never married. Am I grateful for my existence at the expense of their happiness, especially my mother’s? No, I am not. 

The anxiety I experienced as a very small child was deeply rooted in the fear I had for my father. I was quiet and shy, which matched my mother’s pallid sadness. Then there were times, right up until my late teens, when I would lash out at her, destroy something precious she owned, try in every way to humiliate her. How she could possibly love me and the rage I inherited from my father is beyond the divine. 

* * *

When I discovered I was pregnant with my first child, I panicked. Familial determinism would make it impossible for me to exist outside the natural order of parents’ misery. Having my own children increased the chances of exponentially expanding the bruised and battered parts of our emotional DNA, our family’s suffering spreading out into the future for years to come. 

My husband told me under no circumstances would I hit the child. He never endured any physical discipline at the hands of his parents. He never cowered on his knees under the rage of a grown man losing his senses. If we were to have children, fear and intimidation were forbidden. My husband’s declaration locked into my mind, and for the first time, I realized I could choose a path different from my parents. I decided to have the baby. 

During my nine-month gestation period, I scrambled to contain my childhood horrors and not let their serpentine will seep into the embryonic fluid keeping my baby alive. I made a promise to myself, even more than to my unborn child, that I would not be the sum of my parents’ flaws. I would not be the living embodiment of their disappointments, their insecurities, their failures. 

Sometimes we learn the best lessons from our worst teachers. I wouldn’t survive if history repeated itself. 

* * *

Everyone needs a little help. They say it takes a village to raise a child. When my husband, who is an immigrant himself, living an ocean away from his Irish family, expressed a desire to have children, I did the calculations. Two people do not a village make. The thought of raising a child, more or less alone, terrified me. I simply did not think I had the extraordinary gumption required to be a mother. I didn’t understand what that would mean for me and another human being. 

Since my daughters were born, I’ve met a lot of mothers who are committed to an over-arching philosophy of ideal parenting. I have a friend who homeschooled their children, and they all thrived on a strict vegan diet. There’s the neighbor who formed a co-op where like-minded parents allowed their children to choose their own first and last names. My colleague hired a tutor for their toddler, aged sixteen months, and a nanny who speaks different languages at scheduled times throughout the day. There’s the outdoor mom who hiked barefoot with her baby strapped to her back. There’s the international mom who pulled the kids out of school every other year for lengthy adventures in faraway destinations. There’s the no shouting mom, the no television mom, the no sugar mom, the no plastic mom. There are so many moms out there. 

I am mostly in awe of these women and totally dumbstruck to learn that their dedication to a particular parenting ideology usually began before their child was born. The child-rearing paradigms that give them so much confidence are supported by research they’ve done, workshops they’ve attended, gurus they hold in high esteem. I learned a lot from all of them. 

* * *

Ernie, a puppet who lives in an apartment on Sesame Street with his friend Bert, grows leafy geraniums in a tidy window box. Living among his houseplants is a miniature-size family named the Twiddlebugs. Ernie has carefully constructed a house for them made out of a milk carton, pencils, matchsticks, and paper clips. The Twiddlebugs are intent on enjoying life with leisurely outings to places like the beach and the local zoo. They’re a quirky little family, not only for their joie de vivre, but also for their feeble-minded delight in problem-solving that so obviously doesn’t result in a solution. 

Once my children were old enough to speak a few words, I wanted to break a hole in the wall of our living room and build a miniature house in it. I wanted there to be a tiny wooden door that could open and close. Inside, there’d be a tiny table with tiny chairs, tiny plates and mugs would be piled in a tiny sink, tiny cushions would be strewn about a tiny sofa. I wanted it to look like a comfortable home whose owner would return soon. I wanted my daughters to believe we lived with fairies. 

There is such a very short window of time when children’s imaginations dominate how they perceive the world, when the veil between reality and magic is invisibly thin. My youngest daughter was three years old when she asked me if life was a dream. She understood that she slept and woke, but could not distinguish her experiences between the two states. What made her young life so remarkable to be mistaken for the flickering ethereal nature of her sleeping mind? How does wonder, the knowingness of a thing’s purpose to delight and astonish, form and become the sustenance for a child’s existence? 

* * *

The culture of mindfulness has become very popular by suggesting a way to momentarily arrest the automatic-pilot mode of our daily grind. We offer to ourselves, and the moments that become our future, an intention. Articulate our desires, whether it be mundane or astronomical, and the universe will consider the possibility of bestowing us good fortune. 

Recently, a friend of mine dropped by with her youngest child. Marie happens to be fifteen years younger than her older sister. The little girl is delightfully curious and has the confidence of being raised amidst a number of loving caregivers, her two older siblings included. I had just finished gardening and was holding a thin branch of leaves from our mulberry tree. When Marie saw me, she reached out her hand, opening and closing it like a small clam. I handed her the branch, and she squealed in delight. She waved it around, raised it above her head, and watched with glee as she made the leaves shake and shiver. 

It struck me that Marie had no other immediate plans. She wasn’t worried about what she was going to do later that day, later that week, or later in her life. At that moment, she gently asked for something reasonable and pleasurable, and her wish was fulfilled. 

* * *

The hour I spent watching Sesame Street every morning altered my understanding of reality. I saw people playing, singing, and laughing. I knew to wish for such things was impossible, so I dared not to. A child of preschool age does not possess enough magic to reconfigure the complexities of their family or living conditions. I had to wait. 

For the longest time, I had no intention of having children. But I had a deep desire to relive my childhood, to “sweep the clouds away,” bask in carefree wonder, and let joy reign. In order to do that, I needed children of my own. Very quickly after they were born, my children became participants and witnesses in a world of my own fantasy and make-believe. They acted as faithful guardians protecting my childhood heart, and together we created the childhood I always wanted. So in the end, my wish really did come true.