Tying the knot
do I have a choice?
For me, ending up childless was never on the radar. My mother had her first at seventeen and completed a family of four by twenty-four. Despite being a devout religious woman, during her last birth, she had the doctors tie her fallopian tubes. One clean knot towards freedom.
My mother never graduated from elementary school. Her vision was so terrible that she couldn’t see the chalkboard, and my grandparents couldn’t afford glasses, so at twelve, she stayed home and helped out Grandma and Grandpa on the farm. Fed the sows, milked the cows, and found what little time she had left to embroider beautiful tea towels for her Hope chest. She tied colored string, over and over, like a dotted line leading to her future.
And it did.
I was six years old the first time I received a Christmas gift that wasn’t for me. Or at least not six-year-old me. It was an electric egg-beater. And it was for my Hope chest.
As if a future could be assembled early—boxed up, perfectly, waiting.
Last year, I learned that “getting your tubes tied” is inaccurate. They actually burn them shut. I discovered this when I was googling “how do they remove a 7cm endometrioma from an ovary?” in the waiting room at Fergus General Hospital.
This was my second Google of the day. The first one was “why do they call an endometrioma a chocolate cyst reddit.” (I add reddit after most of my Google searches. I want to know that the person on the other end of the answer can also feel pain.)
I learned it was a cyst filled with old blood. One of the only ways to diagnose endometriosis without surgery.
Two hours later, my doctor says having a baby will cure my endometriosis.
The decisions women make about their bodies are not often premeditated. They’re made in the moment. Unwrapped like a present not asked for. Sometimes the ribbon is already curled.
In the Mennonite faith I grew up in, womanhood came with a set of tidy instructions: you were meant to marry, submit, multiply, and endure. A girl’s life, folded and stacked. A future you didn’t have to invent, just accept. What a relief, right?
In my poetry collection, A Little Feral, I am trying to name what happens when you leave a belief system, but the belief system doesn’t leave you. You can walk away, head high, sure, but the knots in your shoulders give you away.
My partner Corey and I are getting married this July. Our first-choice venue was entirely outdoor, set in a vineyard in Niagara. The dream was an October wedding with bouquets of plum-colored grapes draped against the white of my wedding dress. I wanted dark, moody photos beside oak barrels and the acrid scent of Pinot Noir in the air. Almost everyone discouraged us, saying it was too risky. What if it snowed early? What if it poured? Bob, the pastor I had befriended at the cafe I go to in the mornings to write, said it’s good luck to be rained out.
“A wet knot is infinitely stronger than a dry one.”
We settled on an indoor venue in July. I suppose we’ll be tying a dry knot.
Writing a book has made me suspicious of my desire for neatness.
I think we all want to feel like we have a thumb on the pulse of our lives. That we’ll notice when it’s irregular, messy or fading. We like to think we’ll be able to intervene at the right time.
But the truth is, our thumbs are slippery, like sin. Often, we fiddle and fiddle, and without realizing it, suddenly we’ve tied a knot. One that’s hard to undo.
Corey puts down the deposit for the venue. Bob’s words sit in the back of my throat like phlegm, but I say nothing.
I’m not so sure there’s another way to braid together a life.
My mother has recently started a part-time job babysitting a toddler from her church. At family Christmas dinner, she mentions, “Hilda calls me Mom,” proudly, her forehead wrinkles dancing with delight. As if becoming a mother is a hope never too far out of reach.
I press a little. I ask her if Hilda’s mother knows of this news, or if she’ll be told. Mom sighs slightly, as if I’m ruining her fun. As if I’m untying the reminder around her finger that tells her she’s still capable of caring.
Some of my friends don’t want to have children. They name off various reasons, but the common denominator is that they already have children in their lives — nieces, nephews — and they’re happy playing the role of auntie. “Pass them back when the diaper needs to be changed,” one of my friends laughed over espresso martinis last Friday.
I laugh along. That’s part of being a good friend.
I’m getting ready to release my book into this world, and folks are asking me about the process. “How long did it take?” or “Did you end up cutting a lot of poems?” I tell them it was like rock climbing. Each poem is a rock. You just have to reach for the next one.
I wonder the same about my mother’s tea towels. If she undid a thousand knots before she got it right.
I wonder if this is what living is. Choosing something. A book. A tea towel. And letting that template guide us—one small knot at a time.
Love,
Maria
P.S. My debut poetry collection, A Little Feral, is now available for preorder. Preorders are incredibly important for debut authors. If you’ve enjoyed reading my writing on here, it would mean the world if you picked up a copy of my book <3
Gorgeous and haunting. Thank you for sharing.
This resonates with me in so many ways. All of the ways, really 🤍 Also, it’s beautifully told. You have a talent for CNF.