My daughter and I are in the art room at the Discovery Museum. We share the clay table with the mother of a newborn and his three-year-old sister. Another mom, pregnant with her second child, sits across from us with her toddler son.

“Do you like being a big sister?” the expecting mom asks the little girl brightly, anticipating the day her boy will play the role of big brother. “Do you help mommy give her a bottle?”

She smiles shyly and gives a proud nod.

My daughter looks up from the blob of clay she’s kneading like a baker. She stares intently at the woman and the little girl, hanging on their every word. I stop my lame attempt to coax a snail from my mound of clay to watch her watching them.

Uh oh. . . here it comes, I think. I wait for her to blurt out that she wants to be a big sister, too. As an only child, she’s made this request more than once.

It doesn’t happen today. But even as I breathe a sigh of relief, I feel a familiar combination of guilt and sadness stirring inside. Guilt because, at forty-seven, I can’t provide her with the sibling she’d love. Guilt because I always feel like she doesn’t quite buy my explanations of why it can’t happen. Everywhere she goes— her school, the park, the museum— she’s surrounded by kids her age with little sisters and brothers or mommies with swollen bellies.

The sadness is for both of us. Because sometimes my yearning for another child is as strong as hers.

It’s a ridiculously greedy dream. I was on the fence, afterall, about being a mom for years. When I miscarried at forty-one I was devastated. But I also accepted that by postponing motherhood for so long, I may have missed my chance. So when I did get pregnant and become a mother at forty-two, the gift was that much sweeter.

Leaving the art room, we pause to gaze at the Golden Gate. It’s wrapped in a soft gray cloak and the day has turned cool since we were last outside.

“You’re my special girl,” I tell my daughter, bending to kiss her cheek.

My one very special child.

By Dorothy O’Donnell

Labels: Discovery Museum Bridge, Dorothy O'Donnell, Golden Gate, older child, only child

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**Giving each child half a mother.
**Shortchanging one almost all of the time.
**Putting the younger in the line of fire of an emotionally immature and unstable boss.
**Breaking up a tug of war over a favorite toy 12 times a day.
**Trying not to laugh when the little one ruins the older one’s elaborate tower of blocks and then looks at me and smiles.
**Consoling the little one when the older one tells him to "Go away!"
**Never having any time for yourself.
**Hearing them giggle every morning in the room they share.
**Satisfaction in knowing that they have each other.
**Being immersed in motherhood. One kid was dabbling.
**Crazy -- what were we thinking?
**Lucky -- we were thinking one of each would be nice.
**A family, one was an accessory.
**Holding them both in my arms and knowing I need nothing else.
**The little one adoring the older one.
**The older one adoring the little one, when it occurs to her.
**Seeing them smile at each other like they never do at anyone else.
**The older one teaching the little one how to play their new game.
**The older one reading to the little one.
**The little one watching every move the older one makes and trying to imitate her.
**The older one muscling in whenever the baby is getting attention and succeeding.
**Ganging up on Mom.
**A second chance to parent without nearly as much anxiety and paranoia.
**Watching the two of them run across the room to give each other a hug.
**Knowing that you love them both equally, but it was having your first that turned on a special light deep down inside you.
**The younger one keeping that flame going, when you think you have nothing more to give.
**Knowing that your second will never receive the massive amount and intense quality of attention that your first did, though you really, really try.
**Finally forgiving your own mother if you were a second child.

By Meeta Arcuri

Labels: Meeta Arcuri, mothers, older child, two kids, younger child

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