Don't Worry, You'll Meet a Man

Why is it that every time I call my mother she asks whether or not I've been on a date lately? Is this typical mom-behavior? At one point I told her that no, I've decided I will never date anyone again for the rest of my life. I said it with utter conviction, too, as though I was telling her about some cult I'd just joined. My answer cut her, and I felt awful for doing it, but I couldn't help wanting to cause my mother pain. Her response was that I shouldn't worry, that some day I'd meet a man and marry him.

I can't begin to explain, no matter how often I say it, that I'm FINE. That happiness is possible and even likely if I don't spend one night a week trying to eat in front of someone else. Sure, maybe he'll love the awkward way I hold my chopsticks, then he'll ask me to eat with chopsticks again and again until finally, months later, he'll get down on one knee and propose. And I will have to say no, I'm sorry, I can't go on pretending I'm fine with this whole chopstick-fumbling thing. I will not marry you.

Or maybe I'll say yes. Yes, because I'll have the image of my mother's disappointed face in my mind. I'll marry some stranger I've dated because yes, it would make my mother so happy.

I may visit my mother in January or February, and I have a sneaking suspicion that she'll try to set me up on a date, which she'll disguise as something else. It will involve plates of cheese and crackers in front of her fake fire, the doorbell, a male guest. I will get absolutely plastered, of course. He'll be a divorced dentist who wears a heavy cable-knit sweater, he'll be stone-cold sober, and he will eat a LOT of cheese and crackers before he leaves. After he's gone, my mother will exclaim that he's very NICE, isn't he? The next day I'll wake up with a hangover and we'll walk her pooping dog. The air will be fresh, the sky blue. She'll tell me how sorry she feels for the guy, whose wife left him for someone else.

I know, I know: my mother loves me fiercely. She just can't stand that I'm alone, and have been for a while, and probably will be for a while longer. It kills her. But can't moms who love their daughters see that aloneness is just this condition, that it doesn't have to be awful -- it just happens? Can't they have more confidence in their daughters? I LIKE being alone. I'm getting used to it. Maybe it even suits me.