relationships — Blog — Tanya Shaffer

Of Sweethearts and Sperm Banks: A Twenty-First Century Love Story

On May 10, 2001, I sat on a mountaintop near Dharamsala, India, watching the last rosy gleam of the sunset reflect off the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, and made a decision. Throughout my adult life I’d boldly proclaimed to anyone who would listen that if I found myself 35 years old and single, I would have a child on my own. Yet for all my bravado, I’d never imagined that day would come. Now my 35th birthday loomed large, and I was, in fact, unpartnered. Blame it on the writer-slash-actor’s peripatetic lifestyle, excessive pickiness, a volatile emotional temperament, or just plain bad luck: my intimate relationships had not panned out as I had hoped.

Your Inner Dog

Years ago, before I had kids of my own, I yearned for every baby and toddler I saw. I had only to pass someone pushing a stroller or toting an infant to experience a sensation in my chest that felt simultaneously like a constriction and an expansion. I loved those babies and toddlers, every one of them, and by love I mean I ached for them with a ferocity that bordered on frightening. I wanted to grab them and make a run for it, to pour my vast untapped reservoirs of maternal affection into their little selves. Fortunately I managed to keep those impulses enough in check to stay out of jail.

Now, with my own two baby boys grown into towering teenagers, I no longer feel that craving when I encounter the three and under set. I still think they’re cute and all, but I’m perfectly content to smile and walk on by. But even though I’m also the mother of three charming canines, a huge and painful tenderness still wells up within me every time I pass a dog.

The Woman Beneath My Skin

The woman beneath my skin is alternately ravenous, elated, grief-stricken, bored.

The woman beneath my skin is sometimes at peace and sometimes dissatisfied with everything, thinking, what else, what else, what else??

She wants company, she wants solitude. She wants to write, she wants to simply be. She is bursting with stories, she has nothing to say.

She is profoundly selfish, she would do anything for her kids. She tries to be kind to everyone, always. Sometimes she fails.

She wants a new relationship. She wants to get back together with her wasband*. She starts conversations with strangers on dating apps, gets excited, loses interest, all within a couple of days, or hours, or minutes.

She determines to invest more in her friendships, then fails to return calls.

Sometimes I get so sick of her.

Off-Leash Writing / Off-Leash Arts