This piece was written by one of our dear readers—a woman with something real to say. Each month, we handpick the best submissions for Dear Reader because we’re after that PROVOKED bite: truth, intelligence, and heart. These stories come from women our age—women who’ve lived enough to know better and still care enough to tell it anyway. Because being seen and heard matters. Because storytelling is how we stitch ourselves to one another. And because when one woman speaks her truth, another finally recognizes her own. — Susan Dabbar, Editor-in-Chief

I raised four boys and assumed little children would fill my house again someday. My sons have their own plans.

I’ve been waiting. I’ve been smiling politely at photos of my friends’ grandchildren, biding my time until it’s my turn. I’ve been living my life but only sort of, like washing the dishes while you’re on hold with the electric company. On walks, I play a little game called “picture this,” treating myself to vignettes of the life I’ve got coming to me.  

There sit my son and daughter-in-law in my living room, joyfully telling me, “We’re pregnant!” There I am, shopping for little sleep sacks, strollers, the best diaper subscription available. There I stand in the kitchen, peeling apples with my someday granddaughter to bake a pie for tonight’s dessert. 

I have it all planned out: I’ll rent an Airbnb close to their house when the baby comes so I’m available but not an obtrusive guest. I’ll never break any snack rules. I’ll behave myself. I’ll do anything they ask, so long as I get to be a grandmother.

Because I’ve never actually considered any alternative. 

I’ve never been an adult without children. I’ve never wanted to be. My first son was born when I was 21 years old, my fourth at 28. I became a single mom to these four boys at 30, and everything I did every single day revolved around them. I volunteered in their classrooms. I worked around their sleep schedules and weekend visits to their father. When they grew up, I was dragged kicking and screaming out of that hands-on role, lost without their daily details to define me. “Don’t worry,” I was told time and again. “It all starts again with grandchildren.”

But I forgot. Becoming a grandmother isn’t up to me.  

And my sons aren’t ready for children—and might not even want them. They’re in the business of living their lives as they are right now. They’re planning their next vacation. They’re building up their savings. They have plants, good soup recipes, friends who meet them for karaoke on Fridays. 

This is what they’ve been gently trying to tell me with their sideways glances and small, sorry smiles. One son finally sat me down and told me that if they have kids, it won’t be for at least five years. Maybe more. Maybe never. We drank coffee in his living room and ate toast with peanut butter that stuck to the roof of my dry mouth. His eyes were watchful for my reaction. I didn’t cry, but oh boy, I wanted to. 

The potential loss of this future made me sad. Of course it did. I’d always thought of it as a certainty—as dear and real to me as my memories of my own small children. I assumed I would get a version of it all back someday. The hallway lined with tiny rubber boots. The cookie baking and pumpkin carving, the sticky fingers and silliness, the weight of a baby sleeping against my shoulder. Our annual week at the lake with buckets, shovels, tiny toes dipped in shallow water. 

It terrified me, too. I imagined a future empty and hollow without children to fill it. I’ve only ever been a caretaker. I don’t know who I am without a checklist. Who would I be if I weren’t needed that way? 

I’m also disappointed in myself. I’ve forgotten the me inside the mom after all of these years. I’ve become a woman who equates who she is with the children she has raised, the people she cares for. 

I’ve forgotten the girl who wanted to go to university. Who wanted to travel and eat and learn and love. Who was just a little bit selfish in that beautiful and necessary way of young people just meeting who they will be. I wonder about her now. She was put on hold for motherhood. She walked away from friendships, from careers, from loves that didn’t serve her children so that she could serve them.

I’m mourning the future I’d treated as a certainty. But I’m also looking at this life I have now. I’m more than this woman who waits.

I have children in my life. I volunteer at the local daycare to “get my fix,” as my partner calls it. I have a big extended family. And yes, every time a cousin announces the birth of another grandchild, the wound will open up fresh. But I can still shop for a little sleep sack, bake cupcakes for the baby shower, and offer to babysit. 

I can focus on the family right in front of me. 

I’m going thrifting with my daughters-in-law. We’re planning a family weekend away in wine country. We cook Thanksgiving together, all of us adults: one son making us amaretto sours, another roasting squash, another laying out the cards for our late-night games.