The Better Half

There's something missing from my last post.  In a committed relationship, it takes two people to make the important decisions.  So where is Ken in all this?

Ken's rule is that I can write anything about him in my blog, as long as it's true.  I was going to leave him out of the discussion, based on the urge to protect him from being blamed or scapegoated, but this topic is incomplete without him.

The bottom line for Ken is: he doesn't want to have kids.  He doesn't have moments of waffling, when he's around adorable babies or watching perfect families share warm moments on TV.  He doesn't even want to produce offspring as insurance against being alone in his old age.

Why is he so unmoved by the prospect of raising a family?  Because he spent too much time taking care of other people in his youth, and now he wants to have his life to himself.

Ken's older half-brother, now 38 to Ken's 34, is both physically and mentally disabled.  He has cerebral palsy, and has the intellectual age of a four-year-old, approximately.  Ken was made responsible for looking after his older brother, Gabe, ever since he can remember.  

Ken and Gabe's parents decided to put Gabe into the regular school system with other kids close to his age, perhaps in the hopes that this would stimulate his development.  Ken went to the same school.  Almost every day, the older kids would make fun of Gabe and push him around.  And every time, Ken would step in to try to defend his older brother - from the bigger kids.  Ken took abuse, both verbal and physical, from these older kids almost every day of his early school years.

He told his parents what was happening.  They were going through a hippie phase.  Their response: they advised Ken to be a pacifist.  I get angry every time I think about it.  They let him continue going to school to get beat up by older kids every day.  What's worse - the pummeling, or knowing that your parents aren't going to help you deal with it?

Ken didn't even get time off during summers.  Instead of enjoying leisure or having fun at summer camp, he was signed up by his parents as a volunteer for Gabe's "special" camp.  He spent all his summers helping disabled kids, who didn't all have sweet and sunny dispositions.  

When he grew to young adulthood, Ken often felt lost in the world.  He never had a chance to live for himself, to develop his own identity.  He didn't get a chance to try things out and decide what he liked or disliked, like most kids.  He started from a disadvantage, and he still feels like he's trying to catch up.

As if this wasn't enough, Ken's dad got really sick in 1999.  When I first met Ken, I was told that his dad was dying of cancer.  For two whole years, Ken's dad hovered at death's doorstep.  When he finally overcame the cancer, his liver and kidneys shut down due to a drug interaction, and he almost died from organ failure.

Ken took a minimum-wage job with flexible hours so that he could care for his father.  He spent every weekend for a year driving his dad to Buffalo and back again for special cancer treatments.  He couldn't afford to stay in a hotel while his dad spent the night in hospital, so he'd drive back home with just enough time to sleep, and then leave early the next morning to drive back, pick his dad up, and drive him back to Toronto again by nightfall.

When the cancer treatments were done, Ken spent hours by his dad's hospital bedside, throughout another whole year, praying and giving his dad hands-on energy healing.  His dad was in the palliative care ward at St. Michael's hospital. It's almost unheard of for patients to leave that ward alive, once they've been transferred in.  But Ken's dad inexplicably recovered.  His organs, slowly but surely, regenerated and began to work again.  The doctors called it a miracle.  Ken's dad attributes it to the hours of prayer and energy transfer.

Obviously, Ken is an incredibly caring and devoted man, when it comes to his loved ones.  No detail is too big or too small for him to attend to.  He has always treated me like royalty.

When we were first dating, he would bring me armloads of roses.  One dozen was never enough.  He would bring two or three dozen, in different colours.  I had vases all around my little apartment that were constantly filled.  He kept track of when the blooms would start wilting, and brought replacements.  I didn't know this at the time, but he sold almost his entire CD collection to the used CD store to pay for all the flowers.

Nothing much has changed to this day.  Ken bends himself over backwards to be the best husband he can possibly be.  He listens.  He volunteers backrubs.  He cooks fantastic feasts just for the two of us, and then insists on doing the dishes too.  He does more than his share of the housework.  He tucks a blanket around me while I'm on the sofa, watching TV.

Sure, he's not perfect.  We have fights a few times a year.  We get on each others' nerves sometimes.  But boy does he aim high!  I trust him completely and I never doubt his love.

When I occasionally bring up my broody impulses, he meets my eyes, and says with all the generosity he can muster: "I'd be a Dad for you.  I'd do my best."  But I know that he's burned out on that intensity of care-giving, maybe for the rest of his life.  A baby screaming at all hours of the night, financial stress, disagreements on parenting: I fear it would all be too much.  That could be what it takes to break us up.

So this is what it feels like: if love and happiness were money, I have been scrimping and saving all my life to finally amass a small personal fortune, i.e. my relationship with Ken.  I have a chance to gamble the whole thing on one spin of a roulette wheel.  Red doubles up my love and happiness.  Black - I lose it all.  It truly could go either way.

I'm not a gambler.  I never play the lottery: neither the pick-your-numbers variety nor scratch 'n' lose.  And I surely have no desire to struggle as a single mom.

If Ken had even 50% enthusiasm for being a parent, we could put that together with my 50% and maybe make a go of it.  But as it is, between the two of us I just don't think we have enough. 

Of course, I could turn around and change my mind tomorrow.  The urges of biology are powerful.  I can feel the undertow of maternal instinct trying to pull my logic off-balance.  In the end, only God knows what the future has in store.  Either way, I'm in His* hands.

*(His/Her/Its as you prefer.)