"Laurie, why did God put all that water out there?"

She spread her three-year-old arms out wide to the ocean, with which she was precariously making friends, running down and teetering on the edge of the water til the baby waves splashed over her feet, then quickly running back, countless times. It wasn't getting old.

Oh. Wow. Is that multiple choice? Be fast with the thinking, woman.

"I don't really know how it happened, sweet pea. But I guess he needed something to balance out all the earth and sand? Does that make sense?"

And um, there is matter, and the matter is in different forms, and this water matter came up out of the earth and oh wow, I'm so bad at science. It wasn't like I was actually painting my nails in class, although there were the multiple sub-par attempts at geology in college.

"Yeah."

"Okay? I'm sorry I don't know more."

"Yeah. I still like it."

"Me too."

And that was that. It may be bad to admit in response to such a heavy question that you have no idea, but I often don't know what else to do besides turn them into a discussion because me, what the hell do I know, so let's just be partners in not knowing. Solidarity - especially in wondering about things - is cool. And one of the bigger rocks of my life is that if I don't know the answer I say that. And in this case, out of deference to her parents' theology, I left the premise of the question alone completely. I'd been asked to be a godmother of sorts. Some things even I don't argue.

**************************
The day before, her mother, my cousin and oldest friend, stood in the hallway of our beach place in a sun hat and asked me if I was going to come out and play in the sand - with her, mind you, not her child.

Building sand castles was big business for us as children spending a week together on this same vacation every year. She was into form and structure, whereas I've always specialized in the wet sand drippy variety given my challenges with both of those things. Her asking me this dead seriously at 38 in the same words she probably used at 8 meant I needed to pretend to need something in the other room so I could really just wipe tears away with a beach towel.

"I was wondering when you were going to come out and play with me," she said.

It's like oxygen to feel so valued, and you don't know you're suffocating til you get it sometimes. I am six months older. Our fathers are brothers. Our path together has been long and not always smooth, but she's on my I'd-take-a-bullet shortlist, because I get all girlified Clint Eastwood sometimes when I love you. And when it comes down to important things like a day at the beach, we all still need to play - we need the people who do it with us to be people we trust, who are fun, and in some cases who have been there for a long time.

The people in my life are generous in sharing their children with me. And it occurred to me a few times in a week lived by an immense body of water - did I mention it goes all the way to Europe, hello - with two little people I care about that one of the only good things about not having my own children might be the preservation of my remaining nerves. Even watching kids I love who are still in no way my own, I'm an overseer who makes up funny nicknames and makes stupid faces and basically keeps them in comedy routine mode for days, but the whole time, I'm watching you, ocean, so back off because I'll cut you. I'll cut...water. That's right. And I'm grabbing the three-year-old's hand although she's all, LET ME GO I'M OKAY and yelling obnoxiously at the seven-year-old to go against the current to swim back a little, before he's pulled halfway to the pier and can't find his way back because he's not paying a bit of attention to where anyone or anything is and WHY IS NO ONE ELSE NOTICING THIS TRAGEDY IN WAITING HERE? WHERE ARE YOU ALL? I AM ONLY ONE PERSON WHO IS NOT A STRONG SWIMMER.

It's so (honestly) blessed frightening to me to see those tiny little arms and legs trusting water that can sweep them out to sea or just to a bottom where no one can see. Raised by a mother who feared water, that's why I throw myself in now, but that's just me so it's okay. When it comes to the babies, hell no. Life vest? Seventeen big lifeguards? (The lifeguards at this beach look a little frail, I'm just saying.) Grade-A floaty things with extra flotation ability? Never enough. You can never. have. enough.

But it's clear that you also cannot let them see you panic, so you have to sing a song or just scream a name again like you're just naturally counting heads when your heart is caught by a really big huge wave. It turns out that all of this behavior is really exhausting.

***************************

By the last day, she was running in fearless with her big brother, racing him from tide pool to shoreline, laughing out loud, Dora bathing suit easy to spot because it was hot pink and well, the big Dora face didn't hurt. It was all really beautiful to see. I calmed down. Some.

On the sand someone who loves me and her talks to me about adoption, about options. She makes it sound easy, and in theory it kind of is. There are children who need homes, there are people who need help, she says and I'm just the person to give it. I have the compassion. I have the desire. But my mind races and midway through the conversation I kind of want to scream and I start to feel agitated and overwhelmed and not really in the right place to discuss these choices.

People want to fix things for me, all the time. They want to fill in my blanks, settle me down the way they know I need it, and this is why I'm lucky because I am so loved. But it's not that simple. It's just me. I'm not sure if they get that part? How could I afford it? What if I got sick, who would step in? What if what if what if?

Also, if I'm honest? Do I want to handle a rack of front-loaded needs on my own? Do I have to? Is that even fair, to you or to me, as fragile as I can be some days, as in need of help myself, obviously or not? I know so well that I'm not a selfish person, I know that I can give until it hurts. And in some ways that's the problem.

And as much as I know they mean well, the overlay of "You can do this, because you do these things" makes it sound too easy, adds a subtext of "you should, because you can." I don't know. It's fairly easy to walk the beach and watch out for the safety of a child in a most temporary way. It's easy - for me - to build that relationship of humor and trust with her. At the end of the day, I'm not responsible (something else that's pointed out to childless people on occasion - the supposed bliss of that lack of permanence. People should think twice before they throw it out as a positive with some of us. Again, just saying.) I don't know if I can swing it, and it's the one thing in life I'd least want to - could afford to - screw up.

I ended the week existentially cranky and a little sad, not wishing to discuss uncomfortable things with people who cared about me, preferring to blame it on hormones or a personality flaw, whatever. It was harder this year to go back to a life that while it is in no way solitary (really, so many people, where did you all come from, hi!) has a hole that I dance around, that I often can't identify, that after years of screwing up by racing to fill, I just let lie and sometimes that's difficult but it's all I know to or if I'm being honest can do at this point.

I do not know what I'll choose. I do not know what life will present to me, or what will make sense to pursue. I'm making friends with moving forward in a rational way. But I do know that there is an ache real and finally permissible when I stand and watch a life that isn't and may well never be mine, when I stand temporarily in someone else's shoes, when at the end of every day I, one of the most social of animals I know, am fundamentally alone.

This is hard to write and may be hard to read. Truth sucks, even partially, sometimes. I refuse to varnish over it, in spite of my knowledge that I try to make the best choices, and the choices that would have possibly made me a mother so far have been quite the opposite.

It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It doesn't mean I'm not confused. It doesn't mean that sometimes I don't look back and chastise myself for the too-many years spent in this train wreck or that. It doesn't mean that tossed off suggestions that are meant to solve this dilemma for me don't piss me off even though I love the suggester with all my heart.

It also doesn't mean that I'm not at a happier, fuller place in my life than I've been in years, because I am. Conundrum. Paradox. I have it covered.

It's a weird, strange beach, this life, and someone did put all that water out there, surrounding it. And like anyone's, it has moments of happy and moments of unbearable sadness that pass and then there's just you on the sand, watching a little girl who has a lifetime ahead of her jump in waves that won't kill her because you'd die first. And sometimes it matters who she belongs to, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it matters what you've got, but mostly it doesn't. It was, this summer, a mix of sad and happy tears. It was a lot like looking into the sun.

Around the Internet, women writing about life without children, and with family, in some form.

Because I could have written something very similar, and because it made me cry, The Fine Art of Giving, from red-haired Blondie at Tales From Clark Street. (Note: in a moment of BlogHer Conference-induced joy, I texted my sister and said something like "You need to come next year because Rita Arens brought her sister and I think you'd like it too." To which my sister replied, "Who's Rita Arens?" My family has no idea what I do here, bless their hearts, but clearly I assume everyone knows who Rita is, and this is that sister I was telling my sister about. Just FYI.)

So I started bawling in all of my hacking, coughing, snotting glory. I called my parents, and they swooped in to pick up their 32-year-old broken baby. I went to their house for dinner and cried, "Some day you will be gone. Who will take care of me if I am sick?" That has always been my worst fear. That I am old and alone with no one to check in on me.

So we sat together on the couches and talked and talked and talked. Ma came up with a huge list of her friends who could bring me soup. While we were talking, a friend of mine texted to see if she could bring me anything. So I was reminded that I do have a support system already in place. I have aunties and uncles and cousins and friends and my parents' friends. They won't let me fall. They will extend their hands.

I just have to remember they are here. I just have to quit looking in the wrong direction for that kind of love.

Melanie Notkin at Savvy Auntie writes about happiness on her own terms at 40.

Julie Cole at the Mabelhood writes about her son's love for Mondays because of the time he spends with her sister Mare.

Photography and Family contributing editor Laurie White writes at LaurieWrites, with lots more photos on Flickr.