I'm Alive!
After so many of you have emailed to say, "Are you dead? Why no recent post?" (and by so many of you, I mean my most loyal reader, JQ) I feel compelled to reconnect with you all via a witty, carefully-crafted and well-thought-out posting. Instead, you're going to have to take the following.
I'll admit I'm feeling a little drained of late. Maybe it's spring's forceful cheerfulness (you can always blame your mood on the weather in New England), maybe it's the fact that I'm actually working on my dissertation for the first time in two years, maybe it's just my allergy medication. Whatever the case, recently my momentum has sunk faster than the 2005 Yankees, and I'm not getting paid $208 million.
Maybe it's an identity crisis. Last night, at Bukowski's, a dirty bar in Boston that people frequent because you can earn your own hanging mug after drinking 100 different beers, I found myself hanging out with a bunch of 25-year-old girls I had just met, one of whom was enthusiastically explaining that "marriage makes people boring." She backtracked like Tom DeLay in front of the Ethics Committee to recover with a hearty, "Oh, but you're married, right? And YOU'RE out!" (meaning, I assume, out on the town, not out in a The L-Word sort of way.) Later, another woman politely asked me where my husband was after she noticed my wedding ring. At Bukowski's, surrounded by the pierced, the gritty, and the unemployed, being married makes you a pariah. Or at least unusual.
On the other hand, six of my friends are pregnant. That's a lot. I barely know anyone with kids, now all of a sudden I'm about to know 12 people. At a Mother's Day brunch on Sunday, I was handed a rose along with the other mothers since my father-in-law helpfully informed the maitre d' that I was a "mother-to-be." I'm not. Except in the same way that I'm a senior-citizen-to-be, or a hot PTA-attending, 40-something-to-be. It'll happen some day, but it certainly isn't in the daytimer.
So, which is it? I am strange for already being committed til death do us part to one man, or am I strange for not making babies with that man, stat? I know the answer--I'm not strange, you're not strange, we all make different choices, blahblahblah. But still, I want to know where the other people are who are doing it like me. Trying to be married, but not dull and complacent, looking for a full, happy life but not ready to procreate. Where are those people? Because if you're around, you're coming to Bukowski's with me next time.
posted by scs @ 12:28 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Glad to hear you are not dead.
As it relates to “where the other people are who are doing it like me” – can’t help you – I am married and carrie is pregnant.
As it relates to “Trying to be married, but not dull and complacent” – can’t help you – I was dull and complacent before I got married and now more dull and more complacent.
And, as it relates to “looking for a full, happy life but not ready to procreate” – can’t help you – carrie is about to burst! JQ
At this moment J&F still do not intend to have babies. Ever. Hard to believe. However, they do not go out to bars and they go to bed by 9:30 p.m. But they do enjoy their life without the lifetime, all-the-time commitment of a baby -- vacations, frivolous spending, etc.
RE: the people "who are doing it like me," let me just say that ... well, first let me say that taken in isolation, that sentence is pretty fun. re: your need for married-yet-free-spirit camaraderie, i think i understand you. but not your plight. this is because i am a terribly unsympathetic person; but also cos kids are the reason the 25yrold was really saying married = boring. marriage is the first symptom; most often it is followed really closely by moving out of the city to have kids or getting pregnant, then deciding to move out of the city. that's how it seems, anyhow. word.
we're out here, sully. we're having fun and going to work and enjoying all our friends - single, married, childless, childful. just like getting married in the first place, people will surprise you with the ways they project their own fears or scars or assumptions or not-readiness onto the state of marriage itself (I suppose just like we did sometimes in pre-James or pre-Colin life, we weren't that interested because we weren't ready either), but, like so many things, it's not about you and your married-ness... it's about what's going on with them. and all stupid comments in dirty bars must be taken with a grain of salt - or a drink.
the full, happy life is good, hard work... and that work won't stop if and when you do get around to procreating... but until it's time, enjoy being auntie and uncle to the kids, and *relish* being able to hand them back to their parents and go home and sleep peacefully - without interruption - in each others arms. kids, like marriage, will be what you make of it and how you chose to respond to the ups and downs of life together... regardless what anyone tells you pro OR con...
and/but... if you can crack the code on expectant in-laws waiting for you to be expectant, let me know. if only you could just be a smartass and tell them to make or adopt another of their own if they are so anxious for a baby to be around... but, somehow, I don't think in these cases that it's good to fight fire with fire!
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