Wedding Time

I have received more wedding invitations in the past year than I have in the ten years before. All of a sudden the children of my sister and friends are getting married. It shouldn’t really surprise me since all of these future brides and grooms are in their mid to late twenties but it seems just like yesterday when I was their age and they were babies.

Like my nephews and nieces, I too got engaged in my late twenties. Ironically I can remember thinking that when I got married I didn’t want any of my nephews and nieces, who were toddlers at the time, in my wedding. Well, I didn’t have to worry about insulting my sisters by not wanting their kids at my wedding as there never was a wedding. You see I kept the one carat diamond ring and dumped the man. Best trade off in my life!

Unlike my sisters and friends I never did get around to getting married. Oh there were (and are) men in my life but I was too busy moving up the ladder in my career to want to be sidetracked by marriage. I realize that I am one of the lucky ones as I truly loved my life as the single career woman. Yet over the years I worked with a lot of professional women who hated being single. They wanted to be married so badly that one even hired a yenta! As much as these women wanted a future husband they wanted babies even more.

I have read about the maternal time clock and I saw it in these single friends but I personally never heard a single tick tock in my life. When a coworker would bring in their new infant everyone would gather around to ooh and ahh and jocky amongst themselves to hold it. Me? I stood far away and would give a little wave to the coworker then wonder how soon I could get everybody back to work without appearing too much of a grinch.

My allergy to babies became a joke both at work and in my family. My brother and sister-in-law have two little ones and I was a horrible Aunt when they were infants. Although I will stay with them now that they are older, I never offered to baby sit when the kids where babies, using my bad back as the excuse. On the other hand I did volunteer to baby-sit their dog and more recently their cat. Although that last time with the cat didn’t work out too well. I had a great time and the cat and I got along marvelously. Each morning when I got up the cat and I went to my bathroom and stood at separate faucets, and while I brushed my teeth the cat would drink from his faucet. It was pretty cool. However two years later and my brother is still trying to train the cat to stop drinking from their faucets. Oops.

Anyway, I managed to avoid all things to do with babies. I even reached my mid thirties before going to my first (and only) baby shower. Debbie, the pregnant coworker, thought it was so funny that hers would be the first shower I attended. She also made it such that I had no choice as her shower was held right after work in our conference room giving me no excuse. Now in my defense, I would have attended my sister’s baby shower but she blew it by going into labor early and having my nephew before the scheduled baby shower! Oh, I just realized I did go to my sister-in-laws shower but I stayed in the kitchen helping with food the whole time. Now that is a funny line. I have about as much to do with cooking as I do with babies so it says a lot if I chose cooking over babies!

But I am getting ahead of myself. It is wedding time for these twenty somethings and not baby showers. Although today the baby shower frequently comes years before the wedding. And that is something I just don’t understand. Why on earth would a smart young woman want to saddle herself with a child instead of going to college? I simply don’t get it. Then again, I don’t understand why a smart thirty year old would want to have a kid either…