Confessions of a reluctant grandmother

I had my first child when she was 17.

Shivering like a wet kitten, she arrived on a midnight flight out of the smoking ruin that had been an escalating war of wills with her custodial parent in Florida. The time had come for Taylor to move to Portland and live with her father. And her father’s wife. Me.

Motherhood, as far as I have been able to eyeball it, is just fine for other people. Siblings and friends have long delivered tales of parenthood’s countless pleasures and countless headaches, and I’m happy for all of you, really. Not my slice of whole wheat, that’s all.

I chose the companionship of a childless marriage, to a gentle man who ached constantly for his two daughters who lived far away. I found them a delightful summer diversion that, mercifully, went home after a month.

The elder daughter went out on her own, but the younger landed in our house, where my beautifully appointed guest bedroom quickly became Taylor’s Room, acquiring that overheated, aromatic, lived-in essence of a Superfund site.

Now she was our responsibility, our worry . . . our daughter. We got along pretty well, for the most part, but when she turned 18, we realized that simply living with two parents didn’t bestow in any child the necessary common sense in matters of the heart - and body. So one Saturday morning, I rousted her from bed and took her to Planned Parenthood.

On 9 May 1960, an advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration approved an oral contraceptive, the first reliable tool for a woman to put a brake on a force as unbending as gravity - the drive to procreate. Not surprisingly, blowback was considerable. Not every state legalized The Pill, which led the Supreme Court to rule in 1965 that forbidding contraception to married women was a violation of marital privacy. In 1972, the court said states could not ban contraceptives to unmarried women. The Roman Catholic Church did ban its use among the faithful, a 1968 prohibition that stands today.

The birth-control pill shifted the economic paradigm, by conferring the power to put off having that first child. In Oregon, the average age of a first-time mother in 1970 was 21.4 years; in 2006, it was 25.4.

So the Pill bought precious time, to earn a degree, to begin a career or an artistic path, to go hiking in Tibet, to devote that rich, wonderful, all-too-fleeting time to crafting an individual definition of womanhood that didn’t automatically include motherhood.

A long time ago, I used the Pill for three months, and I quit because I didn’t like how I felt on them. But it seemed like magic, that good ol’ American ingenuity had created this tool that lay down a small bit of level on the playing field.

“It’s reasonable to be afraid of something new,” I told Taylor outside Planned Parenthood, as she held a small brown paper bag with a three-month supply. “But this is part of taking care of yourself. You have a lot of things to do before you have a baby.”

“I know. It’s OK,” she said.

“There’s school and work, and you’ll want to travel, and there’s so much in the world for you to do. You just do not need a baby right now, honey.”

“Yeah. I know."

She got a job, did well at it. She went Portland Community College and loved the psychology courses, but she aimed for the veterinary-technician program - maybe, she said, she might even become a zoo vet. She met a nice boy, name of Kyle, only a year older than she.

She was rolling. Earlier this year, her father and Taylor and I agreed that it was time for her to make her way into the world. She leaped at the freedom, spending days and nights in the suburbs looking for housing and employment. In six weeks, she moved in with a friend and got a full-time job at a nearby drug store. She’d picked the area, she said, because it was close to the PCC campus. When we took her and Kyle out for dinner on her 21st birthday last month, she was mature, self-aware, launched into her life.

Then, a week ago, her father hung up the phone, took a deep breath and said Kyle had just called to say Taylor is pregnant.

They came over last night, looking so damn cute sitting together on the couch. I struggled not to go all Betty Friedan on her - opportunities lost! paths not taken! people not met! What are you doing?

But there she was, glowing and happy, her fingers laced with Kyle’s. They would get married as soon as possible and rear the baby. They wanted a family. They were young and excited. Not a shiver, not a faint moment in the eyes, nothing but that crazy courage that you have only when you are 21.

“I’m ready to do this,” Taylor said. “This was meant to be.”

Yes, she said, she wouldn’t be traveling the world now. But the world was always out there, waiting, and one day, she and Kyle and their child will go out and see it.