Mothers are the Zest

On the Saturday before Mother’s Day, Envy Nail & Spa is an explosion of pink. Pale pink like rosé and the velvety petals of peonies. Hot pink like bubblegum and the ruffled edges of sunset. Fat pink ribbons hang from the cash register and each brass wall sconce. Pink helium balloons hover over the manicure stations, positioned over the technicians’ heads like comic strip thought bubbles. One balloon is yellow and shaped like a lemon—it reads, Mom, You’re the Zest!—the sole nod towards nonconformity in this pink pronatalist propaganda machine.

The decorations are surprising, but the hard-working, good-natured Vietnamese women who wave from their workstations are familiar. They wear name tags that identify them as Vivian and Jessica and Lisa, which are almost certainly not their names, as these are not second- or third-generation Americans, but recent immigrants who struggle with conversational English. Vivian leads me to an oversized massage chair, plops me down, and immediately launches a practiced holiday greeting. Happy Mother’s Day! She’s missing her left incisor; her smile is genuine and disarming. Happy Mother’s Day to You! I say, matching her exuberant tone. We grin at each other, and I hope this will be the end of it because I don’t want to get to the part where I explain, actually, no. I don’t have children. I don’t want to see Vivian’s friendliness turn to pity, then confusion, and then mistrust and hostility as I explain, oh no, it’s fine. I chose not to have children. I’m happy as a clam.

It’s my own fault. What childless woman schedules a pedicure on Mother’s Day weekend? I look around as Vivian rubs my toenails with acetone-soaked cotton to remove my derelict purple polish. Between the customers and the technicians, there are fifty women in this small, square room—and only one, I estimate, who is childless by choice.

It’s my own fault. What childless woman schedules a pedicure on Mother’s Day weekend? I look around as Vivian rubs my toenails with acetone-soaked cotton to remove my derelict purple polish. Between the customers and the technicians, there are fifty women in this small, square room—and only one, I estimate, who is childless by choice. This is not a complicated calculation. I don’t even need to factor in race and class, or the selection bias at play because of the proximity to the holiday. Birth rates are declining, but still, most women are mothers, and those who are not most often attribute their status to infertility or circumstance. The childless by choice are a minority among a minority.

If I’m forced to announce the truth, Vivian could surprise me with her version of Oh, thank God. Me, too, but she would probably react like most people who assume I am selfish, damaged, or just didn’t find the right man. None of these explanations fit—at least, not exactly. But the truth is too complicated to explain as Vivian pounds the soles of my feet with the heel of her palm and rubs blackberry-basil sea salt into my calves. No one chooses this one, she says, referring to the scent I picked. Always rose. Always lavender. She seems pleased. Maybe Vivian is a bit different, I think. Maybe she’s responsible for the lemon balloon.

I smile but say nothing. I enjoy silence, and presume the staff appreciate a break from the ritual performance of American customer service. But maybe I’m wrong. The salon buzzes with murmured conversations. One customer, a woman with the look of a spinster barrister on a British crime show—frumpy bun, long beige sweater, glasses on a granny chain—has Tiffany, Daisy, and Susan, the manicurists who are within earshot of her, erupting in peals of laughter. Maybe my disinclination towards small talk is a sign of selfishness. I shut my eyes and sink into the giant massage chair, letting the fake fingers move up and down my back, delivering their rough percussion and compression. You’re tired, Vivian says. Mothers need rest. Vivian is usually quiet, too, but today, she’s leaning hard into her role. If she starts asking pointed questions, I’m prepared to use my two nieces in Seattle as proxy daughters. I could brag with sincere enthusiasm for the remainder of my pedicure about their kindness and intelligence and beauty and good jobs, but I’d rather not lie about our relationship. Thank you, I say, opening one eye. It’s nice to relax.

I share these observations not in a spirit of self-pity or belligerence, nor in response to a certain politician’s oft-repeated comments about “childless cat ladies,” but because compulsory sentimentality around motherhood is under-analyzed and over-imposed. I suspect I’m not the only one at Envy Nail & Spa who feels pressured into avoidance or dishonesty this weekend. Maybe the heavy blonde in pedal pushers waiting to get waxed has a son in prison. Maybe the woman reading People Magazine in the chair next to me has a daughter who dates women, and she can’t tell her friends at church. At least a handful of these mothers can hardly stand their children right now: a rational response given whatever phase of disobedience, disrespect, or dysregulation their children are currently navigating. If we counted off, the number whose children have drug problems or mental health challenges could take up half the room. Some parents and children are estranged. And what about the women whose children predeceased them? How much are they enjoying today’s glass of pink Kool-Aid?

Vivian is putting a clear undercoat on my cleaned and trimmed toenails now. I wonder if her mother is alive, and if she is, whether she lives in the US or in Vietnam. Does Vivian send a portion of her wages home to her parents, like many immigrants do? Or does her cash flow the other way, supporting her children’s dreams of college or a three-bedroom townhouse or a vendor’s booth at the Farmer’s Market? Maybe she’s saving up to open her own salon. They say the actress Tippi Hedren helped twenty Vietnamese women in a California refugee camp become trained manicurists; fifty years later, the Vietnamese dominate the industry, owning more than half of all nail salons in the US. One woman’s decision, generational impacts. This your color? Vivian asks, picking up the shade of turquoise I selected from hundreds of tiny bottles on the wall. Yes, I say. What do you think? I’d had a hard time deciding between this polish, called ‘Blue Eden’, and a dark plum called ‘Wine with Everything.’ She paints the nail on my left big toe, and considers it for a moment. Pretty, she says.

But she didn’t raise me to be a mother either. I wasn’t a girl naturally inclined to fawn over dolls or drool over wedding dresses or actively solicit babysitting gigs. It’s not that I didn’t like children; I just didn’t like childhood. Similarly, although my mother loves babies, she never seemed particularly enamored of motherhood, particularly the long haul between ages 2 and 18.

I have a mother, and as it happens, she looks like Tippi Hedren; at almost 90, she is blonde and trim and could be mistaken for a movie star. Sometimes, people ask if we are sisters. We live 2,000 miles apart, but when I’m able to visit on Mother’s Day, we participate in the conventional rituals ourselves—the brunches, the mani-pedis, a few too many glasses of bubbly—and I don’t let my truculent opinions ruin her celebration. This year, I couldn’t travel. When I called her before coming to the salon, she asked: What are you doing for Mother’s Day? and then answered her own question. Nothing, I guess. You don’t have anything to celebrate. This isn’t even passive-aggressive. A devotee of strict gender roles and a proponent of doing “what’s expected,” the idea of a childless daughter still baffles her. My mother didn’t raise me to be a minority among a minority.

But she didn’t raise me to be a mother either. I wasn’t a girl naturally inclined to fawn over dolls or drool over wedding dresses or actively solicit babysitting gigs. It’s not that I didn’t like children; I just didn’t like childhood. Similarly, although my mother loves babies, she never seemed particularly enamored of motherhood, particularly the long haul between ages 2 and 18. Perhaps her motherhood mojo was used up by the time I came along; I was an “oops” baby. Fair enough. But when childhood feels like a ride on a long sigh of exasperation, motherhood seems like something one endures, not chooses.

Still, I did consider becoming a mother, more than once. In my late twenties—single, straight, and skeptical about finding a life partner—I considered coparenting with my friends, Emmett and Don. The mathematics made sense to us: one child, two households, three parents. As public health workers, we didn’t know how we could afford children without pooling our resources, and our plan neatly addressed my lack of a man, their lack of a uterus, and our shared aversion to becoming frazzled, isolated, and resentful parents. One, two, three, said Don. It’s not just a sequence; it’s a sum.

Vivian has the blue nail polish on all ten toes and is brushing on a final coat of clear lacquer. My feet look fantastic. Fifteen minutes, she tells me, and disappears while my nails dry. How much of life is pure choice? Before we could buy a turkey baster, Emmett and Don introduced me to their neighbor, an older man with adult children. We talked about housing segregation and Alexander Calder sculptures. We squabbled amicably about where to find the best bagels, forest hikes, and mushroom compost. We laughed, and flirted, and equivocated, and fell in love. Oops. Now, my coparenting mathematics would include one child, two households, four parents, three adult step-children, and a step-grandchild on the way who would be older than his or her would-be aunt or uncle. Traditional methods didn’t add up either. My new partner hadn’t planned to raise a second family, and couldn’t father more children. He said he’d consider my coparenting venture with Emmett and Don, or adoption, if it was something I really wanted. Did I? He’d be collecting Social Security before my child acquired a driver’s license. We adopted a dog.

Raising children is urgently important work. I may be annoyed by invasive questions about my family status, but I’m incensed that mothers receive flimsy gestures of appreciation instead of practical support, like subsidized child care or safe schools or countless other things families need to thrive. For example, the expanded Child Tax Credit drove child poverty to a record low in 2021. Because Congress chose not to extend it, three million children were thrown back into poverty by Mother’s Day 2022, and presumably remain there—a fact so heavy, it should weigh down every helium balloon in the nation.

Could I have been a good mother? My nieces say yes, but they only know me as childless, and therefore, in possession of an ample reserve of patience and humor. Ultimately, I didn’t think I could mother well with the resources I had, so I didn’t—a decision I made without much hand wringing. Is that choice or circumstance? Nature or nurture? Does it matter? When we remove the rose-colored glasses, the gulf between what we say we value and what we do to protect or jeopardize those things is apparent everywhere—even here. The lack of regulations on phthalates, which Vivian and her colleagues are exposed to on-the-job, mean nail technicians risk a higher likelihood of prenatal complications and birth defects if they become pregnant.

Vivian returns and tells me it’s time to go. She leans over to help me slide my feet into my flip flops—slowly, one by one—so I don’t smudge the toenail polish she carefully applied. You made the right choice, she says. I’m startled, until I realize she’s referring to my feet. Very unusual color. I pay at the front desk by the prayer altar, which someone has stocked with fresh carnations, five kumquats, and a round iced doughnut with sprinkles. I leave Vivian a big cash tip. She flashes me that gap-toothed grin, her smile oddly beautiful because of what’s missing.