At age 30, my efforts paid off when I learned my first book was going to be published. I burst into tears; it was a happiness unlike any I had known. Not long after, a male colleague at a dinner party warned that, if I wanted to have a child, there wasn’t “time to spare.” But I did have time. I didn’t want children. And I married a man who felt the same way. Instead, I taught and wrote. My husband and I held dinner parties and traveled, trying out those early dreams.

But as my sisters began to have kids and I greeted my new nieces and nephews, something shifted. I believed that being an aunt would be the perfect fit―all glory, no guts. It was lovely to have children to spoil without having to worry about the daily realities of parenting. But to my surprise, aunthood brought its own sort of discontent―a subtle, quiet appetite for more. After public readings, I was frequently asked if I had children―for no reason that I could discern other than my being female. One day a woman in the audience blurted, “Diana’s books are her children!” I knew she was trying to be helpful, but I felt a twinge of discomfort. I wasn’t sure I wanted my books to be my children.

I started registering clear signs of ambivalence. My husband and I acquired Yogi, a little Italian greyhound. And I promptly developed a telling habit of flipping Yogi on her back in my arms while cooing, “Be the baby.” She helplessly let me cradle her while my husband rolled his eyes.

I turned to books for guidance. I read in a biography of Julia Child that, despite a life of fame and excitement, she may have regretted not having children. I felt those words reverberate in me. Still, I was in my 40s by that point. There were risks associated with late childbearing, of course. What felt more daring still was challenging my own idea of who I was: I had never thought of myself as a mother, and it seemed a little late to make such a drastic change to my identity.

But, I realized, I had changed already; it had happened so gradually I almost hadn’t noticed. My work had given me great satisfaction, but there were parts of me that it didn’t reach. I found myself thinking back on those times at the Flamingo Bowl. I didn’t want only the solitude of work. I yearned for more joy, more clamor, more life in my life.