(photo credit: Jeltovski@Morguefile)
I’ve said I would remarry, but really? I think I could be happy as a clam living in sin with my Hotpants lover the rest of my life. The Beatles told us, all you need is love. They didn’t say anything about marriage certificates.
The main reason I’d remarry is, I’d like to have babies and it would be great if they weren’t born of wedlock. But there again, pre-marital baby making is the way in my family. Each of my grown siblings walked the aisle alongside a bride with a baby in her belly; the delivery room staff being very confused when—instead of the standard cry—our little ones were born wailing Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.
Of the unmarried siblings, two of them are teenage boys whose obsessive preoccupation with video games—to the detriment of their hygiene—effectively ensures they will remain sexually pure until one of them takes a break from Halo long enough to google, How do I stop being a virgin? And the last and littlest sibling? Josie Jo is two. She can’t eat a banana without first mashing it down her frontside, so it’ll be awhile before she’s shamefully impregnated.
Are you surprised I have a two-year-old sister? The thing about my father is, outside of having excellent taste in beer and bratwurst, he is Supremely Virile. My dad is 58. He has sired a slew of children (five) over a time span (30 years) in which his mustache has gone from being righteous to ruinous to righteously ironic, in an easy fashion that would put all but TLC’s Duggar crew and their matriarch’s clown car womb to shame. My father’s daughter in so many ways, clearly I’m not living up to my potential on this one.
Even as I lament the failure of my ovaries to produce the surprise pregnancy my birth control pills are successfully preventing, I still have hope for the future. Maybe the far distant future. In one fantasy, sunlight streaming through sheer curtains, a faded flower-patterned tablecloth under our plates, we’re having breakfast. In my hand, a foggy tumbler of Metamucil. In Hänni Jr.’s, a half glass of organic apple juice. Both of us are trying to pass something—for my daughter, it’s time before the bus pulls up to whisk her away to school; for me, the aged matriarch, it’s last night’s Salisbury steak and pureed peas which have become uncomfortably lodged in my increasingly stubborn intestinal tract. Looking up from her bowl of organic raisin bran, Hänni Jr. asks Momma to make her laugh. I take out my dentures, wincing a little at the relaxed suction and sticky bits of adhesive. I grin at Jr. My smile is all wrinkles and mottled pink gums.
I always thought that by this age I’d be a mom—and not just to hairy babies who lick their own butts and subsist on dry kibble (no offense, cats). Blame it on biology and the fact that in three weeks I’ll be 30, but dang it, I’ve got babies on the brain. Not ready to be a bride, maybe I’ll make a baby the way my mom made me, which is by accident. Yes, it might be nice to have something growing inside me … apart from the unease that one day I’ll find Salisbury steak and mushy peas a delicious and desirable supper, that is.
Right: Stinky Sphynxy feigns innocence, “I’m just feeling up mommy’s boobs” he says. This story does not hold, mostly because mommy doesn’t have any boobs. Left: Bella Donna Bad Girl enjoys fava beans and a nice chianti with her organic kibble. Center: Smiley face hides boobs mommy doesn’t have.
but I digress.
