Lost and Wanted

by Nell Freudenberger

I’m what is called a single mother “by choice,” which means that I decided to give up on the fantasy that a man with the intelligence and ambition required to interest me in the long term would arrive at the perfect reproductive moment, and be willing to give up a certain measure of professional success to contribute to the manual labor involved in raising a child.

The model gave me a kind of happiness that didn’t depend upon anyone else; it could be carried with you. I thought that this was what religious faith must be like, the peace in knowing that there was something beyond the world you knew, and that your own inner experience would indeed endure.

The raw heartlessness of children continues to surprise me. Much is made of their sensitivity and purity—and those things are true of Jack—but I’ve been fascinated to observe that we aren’t born with empathy, that our own needs and wants radically trump those of all others, at least until we learn to feel otherwise.

This is true of my married friends in general: they revel in the details of any romantic interaction, in the way people who once visited the place you’re traveling enjoy comparing their memories with your contemporary snapshots.

I think that with most of our friends we choose how much of ourselves to reveal, and with a very select few it feels as if there is no choice.

The mania to perfect things that are by their nature imperfectible is one of those areas in which I most frequently make a wrong turn.

“I always talk about a scar: that the wound never goes away, but that it gets covered by some protective tissue, more and more each year. And then one woman says to me, ‘Yes, and then the tissue grows so thick you can’t see out.’ ”