Gisela Haensel

For years, we’ve been meeting

on Zoom and on WhatsApp almost

every day: My life of being childless is

hidden until I beam myself to this other

planet where I can exist as all of who I

am as long as we fit into the box

on the screen. And then

you landed in my analog world — in the city of

San Francisco on a Friday afternoon in May:

Feet on the ground, live, and in color; I

couldn’t stop looking at you, my real-life

role models, soaking it all in for 3 days straight.

 

This is how it looks like when a childless woman orders coffee,

and when she eats a sandwich, it looks like that.

And look, now she has a chuckle.

This is how she walks, and how she talks,

and how she enjoys herself in the sunshine.

She can do all of this while being childless.

 

I could see myself in you, in

all of you, each of you with her very own flavor of

childlessness. You breathed new life into

familiar places, and I could ease myself into being

with all of me while being with all of you.

We took up space and claimed it

as ours: Real-life space for real childless women.

 

Taking a cab while childless.

Riding on the cable car while childless.

Having a meal while childless, and ordering a cocktail.

Shopping for bee socks while childless,

and practicing martial arts in the Y at the Presidio.

Laughing while childless, and crying too.

 

And it felt so good, so

liberating, taking up space with my childless

body and pushing energy around,

being fully present in the real world

while childless, living my life.