Why So Old?

I was talking to my sister the other day. She got married at 28 and then had three kids with no probs. That was always my dream scenario. If you would have asked me what my life's plan was when I was fifteen, I would have looked up from my Seventeen Magazine and said very sure-footedly, "Oh, I'll get married at 28 and then have a few kids."

I thought 28 was so old then. I thought I would be one of the brazen few who got out and lived a little before settling down. Have a career, see the sights. Well, I saw some sights, alright. Needless to say, I was married at 35 and had one kid that took some time and effort. And that, as they say, was the end of that. And it got me thinkin'. If only.

I do not regret not marrying my college sweetheart, the one who was going to buy a castle in France after we got matching tattoos. The one who later became a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and then a nut job. I'm sure I could have pumped out little baby turtles with nary a hitch. There were the two rock stars and the brilliantly creative Beavis and Butt-head director. He ended up marrying the next girl he dated but then went a little cuckoo. Too bad because he was fun-ny. Are you getting a whiff of a pattern here?

"Any history of insanity or instability in your family?" a doctor asks.
"No, but I'm wildly attracted to it, does that count?"
It should.

The Pickle Guy would have gotten me knocked up in my early thirties which would have been a heck of a lot better than my late thirties but alas, I couldn't do it for, you guessed it, reasons of insanity. Let's just say this dear man was pickling more than just cucumbers. And the Meat Man, as my friends called him, (he sold specialty meats,) was so sweet and so kind but I had to explain jokes to him and I just couldn't stand the idea of being married to a guy who wasn't at least as sharp as I was. The idea made me, you got it, insane.

I wasn't foolhardy about any of it, at least I didn't think I was a the time. If I got the distinct impression that this man wasn't going to sire my children, I cut bait. No sense in dating the guy for a couple three years when I knew it wasn't going anywhere. At 32 I gave myself the Six Months Rule. If, after six months, I knew he wasn't The Guy, we broke up. So, I am not guilty of lolly gagging away my fertile years. I jumped back in the pond as quickly as possible. Went to every party I was invited to. Dressed attractively for airplane rides and went on what seemed like 100 blind dates and fix-ups, back in the day before Match.com. So I had my eye on the prize. No messin' around. No moss on me.

Then I met him at 34, married him at 35 and had a son at 37. The one and only. The final.

Which brings me to my "Ancient Womb Syndrome" which it's lovingly referred to in medical texts, only made worse by the fact that women my age and older are getting preggo all the time, but enough. Not in the cards for me. I'm lucky enough and grateful as all get out to have had one. And thank goodess for the adoption option. Sure, it's only slightly less invasive than being vetted by the FBI so that the Secretary of State can swing by for chili on a moment's notice. And it's only slightly more fun than a job interview for, let's say, the only job on the planet and if you don't get the job, well, then you don't eat and you'll die. No pressure.

But I still don't regret not having married any of the parade of miscreants who traipsed through my shower back when I was young and more fertile. I waited for the right guy for me and he was worth the wait.

Maybe what I should have done was gone into therapy when I was six. So that I could learn how to read the writing on the wall. Much more important than all that silly nonsense in books. "The wall, read, the wall!" someone should have shouted.

I look up, dumbfounded, whispering to myself, "Ooooohhhhh, right."