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The World Won’t End if You’re Over 40 and Unmarried
This spinster’s doing just fine, thanks.
Many years ago, my best friend’s nine-year-old daughter and I were playing. Our play consisted of her weaving pink ribbons through my hair or me helping her assemble an imaginary set for a show she’s intent on producing (she’s creative, this one). One day, after I’d placed one of the many glittery crowns she owned on her head, she asked, Are you ever going to have children, Felicia?
I admired her moxie, the way she’s able to navigate a terrain that one considers a minefield. Adults exercise politeness and discretion in a way that can sometimes be mind-numbing, and it was a relief to hear a child ask something so plainly — just because I’m the only woman she knows who doesn’t have a child of her own.
My best friend and I exchanged a look, and I said, No, I don’t plan on having children. She appeared pensive, and after a few moments, she nodded her head, said, okay, and we continued on with our play.
I did love, once. But it was love that was easily altered. We were our terrific photographs, speaking of emerald-cut sapphires, white dresses, and children winding around my calves. But even as our dreams metastasized, they felt distant, foreign — this life we spoke of resembled an uninhabited country that required a…
