This scene from the movie My Cousin Vinny has stuck with me over the years:

I laughed and understood that Marisa Tomei’s sentiments were those of most women. The accepted narrative being that women are in this big race against time to fulfill their purpose of bearing children. Once you hit your mid-20s, the clock starts ticking. So naturally, one day I too would hear that same dreaded tick-tock.

Lo and behold, that  if the alarm on my biological clock has gone off, I must have hit snooze. To clarify, I am not referring to my body. If being 34 means that I am supposed to feel a time crunch to have children, then I must be young at heart because I feel no pressure. I am not in a race, not against my own body and certainly not against anyone else.

Let me explain, I grew up in the Jewish Modern Orthodox world and imbibed in my childhood was an understanding that I was meant to meet a man, marry and start a family-in that order, please; I spent a lot of time struggling to find my place in this world as a single woman. So I dated,  A LOT.  Blind dates, during which I learned the crucial lesson that you must, must Google people before accepting a date and that one little cup of coffee can actually be a form of torture. I willingly shared the details of “what I was looking for” with every new person who asked – remember I talk a lot. Sure, I had fun too, but  all of this was towards the fulfillment of my destiny. At a certain point the word beshert made me want to vomit.

Then the most dreaded of events suddenly happened, I turned 30- as a single woman- oh the horror! Surprisingly,  I was overcome with a sense of freedom. I could hardly believe that my world did not crumble in front of me, but instead it got so much better! I picked up and moved from Jerusalem to Haifa, started a new job, and added some more friends to the wealth of great people in my life. I felt liberated, and I stopped behaving as though I was waiting for a partner to come around so that my life could begin. I still dated, but I was not afraid to be fulfilled by and grateful for the wonderful people and elements that my life comprised. It was also around this time that I thought about whether I would want to parent a child on my own if I didn’t end up meeting a partner. For me, it was clear that the answer was no;  I would only embark on all the challenges involved in parenthood with a partner. Make no mistake, I still wanted to have kids, but the alternative did not feel like a compromise or some inferior existence; I had visions of the things that I would do independent of who was in my life. Quite simply, I was happy and content.

Enter Tommy, the love of my life. In the blink of an eye we were envisioning our lives together, talking about a family, and I was moving back to Jerusalem (the things you do for love). I knew that most people must have assumed that we would want to have kids immediately. After all, we were in our early 30s, so tick-tock, tick-tock. In fact, we were, and still are, so happy that we wanted to take time just enjoy each other and our new shared life without all the common “joys” that go along with pregnancy, preparing for a child, and then having an infant. The rest of our lives was, and remains, ahead of us and we chose to cherish the moment. We knew that if infertility was an issue that we would face then so be it, but we would not allow our lives and every decision to be dictated by that possibility.

I have yet to hear the clock, but I do have a condition known as endometriosis; I had it ten years ago and I refuse to consider that I could or should have done anything differently to change my situation. Tommy, on other hand, could have asked me out years ago when our paths crossed for 30 seconds in 2005! Here’s a reality check, both men and women hear the clock ticking away when it comes to their lives. I refuse to spend precious moments obsessing over those things that are missing in my life, because let’s face it, there will always be something. Instead, we make the best efforts to move forward towards all of our goals, but we are sure to enjoy all the wonderful things that we have together. No regrets.

Afterall, tick-tock.