Creator

Does the creation belong entirely to the creator? I once read a story about a couple who parted after a brief affair, which resulted in a child. Many years later the man came face to face with the news of his fatherhood, hitherto hidden from him and he said,

This child is as much mine as yours. You had no right to hide it from me.

I accept the logic of that. But I do not empathise.

I put myself in the woman’s place and thought over what I’d do. And it was a revelation. If I found myself in possession of something that belonged to me, in part and to someone else as well, not anymore in my life, I would consider the need factor….how much I needed it, how much they did. If I did not need it anymore and they did, I would most certainly track them down and hand it over. If I needed it and so did they…well, tough luck.

What struck me was that when I thought of not an object, but a life growing inside me, impregnated by a man but one with my body now….I could only think of it as…mine. I could see the science about not being able to create life without the man to start it, but once that seed was united with my body, it became mine, in reality, and in concept. I realised that I would not bother to share that baby or even the news with the man unless I really needed him – for social sanction, for financial support, whatever.

I suppose it is worth considering the fact that I have never been pregnant, much less by someone I had actually ‘made love to’, someone who mattered so very much that the act of creating too would be an act of sharing. The thought is nice but it seems nebulous to me. All I can think is of the biology of it and a sperm once united with the womb becomes an egg that is a part of me. No one therefore has any furthur claim on it.

I don’t have a secure place to stand on and say that is this is right or logical…only that it is true. If women are universally selfish, I have discovered yet another level of womanhood in myself. Mea culpa.

And I cannot pass up the chance to make another Smart Alice observation, considering all this and also the number of women who use pregnancy to ‘snare the man’ so to speak…

Ah, what a tangled web we weave, when we first practise to conceive!