I´m in my 30s, but I joke that I´ve been a grandma since birth. I’m an only child, and my grandmother raised me while my parents were out of the picture. I grew up in a sleepy town built around fishermen and summer tourists. My grandmother’s house was on a peninsula, a seven-mile stretch of the Atlantic on the south shore of Massachusetts.
My grandmother was my world, and I understood from a young age that I was lucky to live with her; grandparents aren’t obligated to raise their child´s child, and if it weren’t for her willingness to act as my guardian, I´m not sure what would have become of me.
But I still envied my peers with siblings or close cousins; I’d walk the beach with my grandma and long to join kids who were learning to surf with their parents or playing volleyball as a family, activities my aging grandmother simply couldn’t keep up with.
I´ve always had poor eyesight and often became clingy and afraid without my glasses. I’d never been able to see my grandmother from the water and dreaded seeing her become a blurry speck on shore. I remember her best up close: big dark eyes, small stature, knuckles gnarled from arthritis.
I felt safer right beside her, where I could see her clearly and trust she wouldn´t simply disappear, but I knew better than to ask her to swim with me; she wore slacks and blouses to the beach for a reason. She raised six children, then me — I understood she was fragile, and that I was lucky to live with her during her golden years.
She often told me, “My body doesn’t recover like yours,” and encouraged me to do scary things on my own, like search for shells underwater and say hi to strangers.
I was lonely in childhood, but I still choose to be child-free
I didn’t much enjoy childhood, but as a child-free adult by choice, I’m embracing the freedom being childless gives me with the support of my chosen family. Since moving from my grandmother’s home more than a decade ago — first to New York, then Boston, then DC, then Atlanta, then Seattle, and now an island in the Caribbean — I´ve greeted many strangers and felt both lonely and beloved.
Since her death eight years ago, I’ve traveled the world like my grandmother never got to — taken solo trips to Iceland for all-night sunshine, gone to Montreal for Pride, and recently, visited the French Alps to spend time with a friend and her wife — and even saved up for corrective eye surgery, hoping Lasik would make me braver, as well as more sporty and spontaneous.
After Lasik, I did become braver — I joined strangers to go hiking, signed myself and my wife up for snowshoeing, and went camping with girls I knew from the internet. I felt less nerdy, less the shy girl hiding behind a book (though I did, and do, always carry a book with me). It’s taken a return to the Atlantic, where my wife and I live for her job, to realize what I don’t need is to simply see clearly, but to trust I have people looking out for me.
We fill our lives with the love of our friends
My wife and I are firm on our decision not to have children, but after moving cross-country for work repeatedly, we´ve come to love hosting people at our home to build memories.
My friend and her wife came to visit us from France, bringing with them a penchant for home cooking and tips on how to air-dry clothes. We snorkeled, swam, and spent long hours exploring the island. I fretted about nature cooperating, but my friend just reassured me they came to spend time with me — she doesn’t even like the heat!
Our friends are already planning to come back and stay with us again, creating new memories and traditions. They even discussed the logistics of bringing a future child and talked about names and parenting values.
I hoped I’d have shaken the chronic loneliness of my childhood by the time I became an adult and learned to embrace being alone without feeling alone, but instead, I’m giving myself the company I always longed for.
Over the years, I’ve joined a queer bowling league, played bingo orchestrated by drag queens, and dragged my wife to board game nights. Growing up, I was jealous of kids who had siblings because at least they had someone as a built-in companion, but nurturing friendships in adulthood is teaching me the value of a small but earnest circle. It’s not about having people beside me, as I once envied, but about people who will forge the distance, even when it’s a plane ride away.
Watching my friends excitedly become parents affirms my decision not to. It could be tempting to have kids to facilitate the childhood I didn’t have, filled with siblings and active parents, but parenting to heal childhood wounds feels misguided and puts the onus on a child who didn’t ask to be here. I also don’t trust myself to teach someone about the world when I´ve barely figured it out myself.
My younger self wouldn’t believe I´m not only openly gay but married, and she especially wouldn’t believe I have people looking out for me, even when they’re out of sight.
