My 9-year-old son’s Christmas list last year read: “South Russian Sheepdog,” “Old English Sheepdog,” “Polish Lowland Sheepdog,” “Tibetan Terrier,” and “Yorkshire Terrier.” He figured if his list had only dogs, he was guaranteed to receive one.
I admired his ingenuity but knew disappointment was near. We weren’t getting another dog. We already have one. Skittles. She’s a bit wiry, but she loves my son, jumping on his back every time she sees him.
After we got Skittles, my son wanted a hamster. “Mommy-please-please-mommy-please-can-we-get-a-hamster?”
We acquiesced. My son is an only child. We had him late in life. I was 47 and my husband was 51. Having a second child would have been pushing it. And so, every time my son wants a new pet, I feel like we owe it to him, because we never gave him siblings. Soon,
we were buying a hamster cage and bedding and a hamster known affectionately as “Fluffy.”
Fluffy lasted about two years, until one day we looked in the cage, and she wasn’t moving. My son was sad for a few moments, and I felt badly. What was meant to give him companionship now brought him sadness. But his mourning period was cut short when he realized what he really wanted was a bird. He wanted one so badly, he would utter long run-on sentences that sounded like, “I wanna bird please can I have a bird when can I get a bird is it time to get a bird how about for my birthday?” Soon, we had two birds named Water and Ice.
But as soon as he saw he couldn’t play with them and touch them and hold them, he began asking for another hamster. To his pets, he was like a bad boyfriend, full of compliments and promises of love and you’re my one and only — until he’s had enough and moves on. And yet once again, under duress of guilt, we bought my son another hamster. It’s since died, which is why my son now wants another dog.
When I posted my son’s Christmas list on Facebook, friends said, “Oh, get the kid a dog.” They don’t know how quickly he tires of these pets, and that it’s not a pet he wants but a sibling. At least that’s my theory. The truth is, I’m not sure why he wants all these pets. I know that’s why I buy them for him. I’ve made assumptions about how he feels before, and I’m often wrong. Like the time he was 2 and a boy at the playground was bossing him around. And when I asked him about it later, he said, “He a good kid. We have fun.” Or when I see interactions between him and classmates, and I say, “You know, you don’t have to be friends with people who don’t treat you right." He’ll say, “Mom, they’re fine. I like them.”
I was volunteering at a school event several months ago when I saw a mother and daughter and wondered if the young girl was an only child probably — because like me — the mother looked a lot older than the other moms. I wanted to know because the child seemed just as happy as the other children. It turned out she wasn’t an only child. The woman wasn’t even the girl’s mother but rather a teacher — who had just one child, a daughter who was now 15. I asked whether she thought her daughter suffered from being an only child.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “Every kid has their own personality, regardless of whether they’re an only child. Some kids are happy. Some kids aren’t. It has nothing to do with how many sisters or brothers they have.”
I wasn’t sure about her science, but I liked her sentiment. I know having siblings is a mixed bag. While my sister and brothers are now dear friends, they’ve always aroused feelings of jealousy and inferiority in me, either because I thought my parents loved them more or that they liked each other more than they liked me. To this day, these are the lenses through which I view every relationship, and it can make intimacy evasive.
I was in a diner recently, thinking about my son, and I don’t know what made me ask the waitress if she was an only child.
But I did, and she said that she was.
“Were you happy? Sad? Neutral?” I asked.
“I’d say happy,” she said. “Maybe neutral.”
“Were you ever lonely?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” she said.
“But you still wouldn’t say your childhood was bad,” I said.
“Nope. Not bad at all,” she said. “I think it made me more creative, out of necessity. I had to create the most elaborate play scenarios.”
She also said she had to be more independent and self-sufficient.
I thought of the countless times I’d seen my son sitting on the couch or back seat of the car with a superhero figure in each hand, murmuring to himself as he played out both sides of a conversation. And if I tried to listen in by saying, “What did he say?” he’d snap, “Mommy! I’m playing!”
I once saw a list of famous “only children,” and among them were Barbara Streisand, John Updike, Frank Sinatra, Leonardo da Vinci, Burt Bacharach, and John Lennon. Perhaps they, too, became more creative out of necessity.
The waitress did say she wanted a dog, badly — a pug — and that she hung pictures of pugs all over the house to get her mother to buy her one. Her mother eventually did, and she treated it like a sister, even sharing her hairbrush with it.
But there was something about the waitress, a calmness, a confidence at 28 that I still don’t have at 57. I wondered if it was that self-sufficiency born out of solitude that she’d mentioned. I always assumed that by not giving my son siblings, I sentenced him to a life of loneliness. But maybe loneliness has gotten a bad rap. Maybe it’s nothing more than the state of being alone, and what one does with that time is up to the individual.
When I walked downstairs this morning, my son was sitting at the table, eating his breakfast, drawing a bearded old man that looked like Santa with a six-pack. “Look, Mom!” he said, holding it up with pride.
“That’s great, pal,” I said. “That’s really great.”
He looked content, absorbed in the task at hand, exuberant about his achievement. And with that, I, too, felt content. And for just a moment, fleeting as it may be, I let myself off the hook.
Sua Balac
