Today a man asked for my hand. At long last, a marriage proposal!
He’s a pretty nice guy, too; I could do a lot worse. He’s not hung up on our cultural differences, he knows how to slaughter a goat, and his mother is inaccessible by wheeled transport. He’s even got a cow, and says that if we marry I can keep it.
I rather like cows.
Of course it’s annoying that after holding out this long I’m only worth a one-cow brideprice, but I recognize that at this point I haven’t got much choice.
Because I’m aging. My ovaries are curdling. Skype video seems to suggests I’m developing a hump, albeit one that is highly pixelated. Most tellingly, the village women have stopped asking about my husband and children, have given up offering me fertility potions, have moved beyond accusing me of sex work, and now just offer advice on how to be a mail-order bride.
It isn’t as if I haven’t tried to get married. I’ve created a detailed spreadsheet of my life objectives and milestones. The cells are linked, so that every twenty-eight days, for example, I get an automatic notice that I am X% less fertile, and this updates my “maximum number of offspring” estimate, which then influences my lifetime budget forecast and uses a logarithmic equation to revise the cost-benefit analysis of joining a vacation timeshare scheme.
Each objective is broken down into outputs and activities and accompanied by a flow chart.
In addition to this detailed planning, every morning I check Facebook to see if my old flames are divorced yet; I schedule my R&R’s for weekends when Venus or Jupiter are in my house of true love; I cultivate an open mind (i.e. I’ve increased my capacity for alcohol and my tolerance for men who wear tweed vests and/or have moustaches and/or have not been through a gender sensitivity training); and I am willing to consider polygamy. Possibly even concubinage.
In a word, I’m stuck. And no internet dating site will accept my credit card.
I know that I don’t need a husband to make me complete. I mean, I already have a cat. I could buy nine more. After I retire, they could coil around my arthritic legs as I count out the pennies of my pension and then, when I die, they could eat my eyeballs.
But being married has definite advantages. In the places where I work, an unmarried female is an embarrassment. Possibly a threat. Certainly you’re not considered a “real woman” until you’ve had kids.
The first question people ask a woman is how many children she has. You can’t say “none,” because then they might not feed you.
Myself, I’ve been telling colleagues and strangers about Patrick, Martha, and Little Bobby, my three fictional children, for so many years that I almost feel as if they’re actual people. Every two years I rip updated photos off of Flickr and put them in my wallet. It’s pretty fulfilling, as families go. I’ve already got Martha’s wedding planned.
If I were really married though, my husband would be able to say things like, “stop grabbing my wife’s boob when she’s jogging” and “release that shipment of maxi pads before I fill a crop duster with small pox” and people might listen to him.
He might also do useful things. I’ve heard of husbands that poach eggs and knit baby booties.
Most importantly, husbands are cheaper than artificial insemination. And I really want a baby. I know that this is selfish. Issues of global over-population aside, there’s the possibility that my child will be born with strange symbionts. I mean, God only knows what lives in my intestines; my doctor certainly doesn’t.
Also, I’m not really equipped for the responsibility. I haven’t enough bosom to keep a baby tied onto my back, and I can never remember the recipe for oral rehydration therapy. I might have to prioritise basic survival - smear the kid with antibacterial gel and then keep her/him restrained in the bathtub.
Not that it really matters what kind of mother I’d like to be, as my NGO’s maternity policy is so malicious that I’ll be obliged to wean the child at ten weeks so I can travel to the field, gender parity being approximately more important to my boss than the future of the human species. The poor thing is going to have a frontal lobe like marmalade.
Sometimes, at night, I lie awake in my mosquito netting cave and share my worries with the Skype Test Call service. The man with the cow, I divulge, is not my dream partner. He lacks a castle, a fortune, and a dual certification in massage therapy and Cordon Bleu. How much am I willing to compromise?
I recognize that I could be over-thinking this decision. As an old maid, I tend to be neurotic - probably because I’m losing eggs so quickly. (I may even have lost one during the strategic planning session last week. That would explain why all my contributions centred on chocolate.)
The man with the cow has promised me that should I marry him he will swiftly fertilize one of my few remaining eggs. Thus, in one fell swoop I could have social credibility, maternal nirvana and, if the rains are good, fresh cream.
Should I do it? Your comments are welcome.
Dara Passano is a pseudonym.
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