On Marriage

I love to sing. I am not very good at it. I don't think it's so much that I am physically incapable, but that I just don't know how to sing versus warbling along with the lyrics of a song. Sometimes if I really forget what I am doing I find myself actually singing, usually when I am in the car or alone. And as soon as I realize it I forget how to do it. One of my secret dreams is to be a wonderful singer. It is probably never going to happen. I would also like to know how to play the piano. And how to make sculptures out of wood. And how to kick box. It's odd that if we don't begin things as children we often assume it is never going to happen. But then you always hear stories about people starting over completely and suddenly taking up mountain climbing or whatever at age fifty two. It'd probably be advantageous not to wait so long.

My grandmother has a bucket list. She'll be 85 next September. The things on her list are comparatively small when held up against the massive accomplishments she's managed during her life. Trip to Maine with the entire family. Set foot inside of the house of her Aunt and surrogate mother, Sissy. How strange to know that your time is limited. Limited by something that will happen in the immediate future, rather than this vast unimaginable finish line somewhere out there, beyond all of the other unimaginable signposts of your future. When I was a very little girl I asked Grandmother if she would come to my wedding. I guess that at that single-digit age marriage was the next signpost, or the next significant signpost. She told me that she did not know, because that was a long ways off. She brings it up every year. A few years ago she told me that she might just make it, but a lot of that was up to me. She also predicted Laura would be married first. I was a teenager at the time, drinking my first real glass of wine at a restaurant called, Trick Dog. I believed her.

I find it hard to imagine that she'll be at my wedding now. With no real intention of being married anytime soon, or even a significant other to pin the intention on, it makes me sad to think that in some way I have gotten in the way of a little girl's wishes. It makes me sad--not that I am not on the fast track to matrimony, but that at age six it was my grandmother's attendance I was concerned about.