03-04/08 Chapter 587: Tic Tac Boom
These past few days, watching life slowly settle back into its normal rhythm has brought me a surprising sense of peace. Vacations are wonderful, but after spending too much time away from your routine, you start to miss the ordinary things. Seeing you put on your little ballerina outfit this morning before school and knowing you were going to celebrate Caio's birthday with your classmates made me smile. There was something comforting about it. Life was returning to normal, and I realized how much I had missed that feeling. More than ever, I can't wait for our apartment to be finished so we can finally move in and begin our new chapter there.
Speaking of birthdays, every child in your class is turning four this year, and you're the very last one—the baby of the class. Four years old... who would have imagined that already? As I've mentioned before, birthdays are magical when you're a child. At least they were for me. I'd say that feeling lasts until you're around sixteen, maybe a little longer. Then something slowly changes. By your mid-twenties, birthdays begin to lose a bit of their magic, and after thirty... well, they're not nearly as exciting anymore. Instead of celebrating another year, you become increasingly aware of everything that comes with getting older: mammograms, colonoscopies, more medications, aches and pains that never existed before, the first gray hairs, weaker bones, teeth that aren't quite as strong as they used to be, menopause somewhere on the horizon, and more responsibilities with every passing year. If childhood feels like one long upgrade, adulthood sometimes feels like a gradual downgrade.
But for me, none of that is what scares me most. What truly frightens me is watching my thirties slowly slip toward my forties without having a second child. I've made peace with the fact that love—and perhaps even marriage—isn't meant to be part of my story. Oddly enough, that doesn't hurt anymore. What has always mattered to me is being a mother, and in my mind, I never imagined having just one child. Please don't misunderstand me. I will spend the rest of my life grateful that I was blessed with you. You are more than enough to fill my heart. But I always pictured our family differently. I never imagined you growing up without a brother or sister, without cousins, without ever becoming an aunt someday. I wanted so badly to give you that gift because I can picture you so clearly as a big sister—gentle, protective, patient, and overflowing with love. I know you would have been wonderful. But what am I supposed to do with the life I'm living now? My U.S. immigrant visa has already been approved, and I have up to three years to move there. By then, I'll be thirty-six or thirty-seven. After I arrive, I'll need to work for at least a year before receiving my Green Card, which means I'll be around thirty-eight. By then, pregnancy becomes riskier, fertility declines significantly, and starting over with a newborn becomes much more physically demanding. Besides, you would already be so much older that the relationship I always imagined between you and a younger sibling simply wouldn't be the same. Instead of growing up side by side, your little brother or sister might feel more like someone you helped raise than someone you truly grew up with.
Which means that if it's ever going to happen, the time is now. Right now. But how? I'm not with anyone, and your dad doesn't want another child under any circumstances—I even asked him, despite us no longer being together. So maybe it's time to accept that this dream simply isn't meant for me. The problem is that my heart has never been very good at accepting reality just because it's true. That's why birthdays no longer feel like celebrations. To me, they feel like a clock ticking louder every year, reminding me that time keeps moving whether I'm ready or not. Sometimes it feels as though my biological clock is leaning over my shoulder, whispering the same cruel sentence again and again: Your time is running out.
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