I wiped a tear as I was getting ready to go out Saturday evening after hanging up the phone with the Very Holy Mother. I was mad, upset, frustrated, and wondering how the hell could she even think or say such a thing?!?! Like Mothers do, she worries about me. The tear left a vertical path on my freshly applied makeup paving justification for her words. The V.H.M. and I speak nearly every day and now, for her to even suggest I should accept things as they are while not being true to myself is absolutely absurd and goes against all the life lessons she’s taught me.

“What happened to the guy your Brother really likes from Christmas.”
“We’re friends Mom.”
“He was really good to you, and you didn’t have to question things with him.”
I was approaching annoyed, “and still is. What are you getting at?”
“He really cares about you,” she lingered on with gibberish.
“That’s not fair to me, and it’s certainly not fair to him.”

She was making excuses for the men in my life.

“Whose side are you on?”

I laid it thick with a line so ugly you could spread it on the Jersey shore and hung up the phone. Seconds later I was calling her back apologizing and feeling guilty. She’s grown accustomed to the walls snapping up and the sarcastic bite that follows when the subject of my singlehood comes up. Yes I made up that word. My birthday is approaching and the V.H.M. scratches her nails down the chalkboard of my heart as she repeatedly states, “I worry about you being alone,” she pauses, “only because you live in the city, Honey.” I’ve taken to calling myself “Her Spinster Daughter.” I could care less about whether or not I’m single or married. As a child we have specific dates in mind and a timeline of the age and space we want to live in. I’ve always wanted to live the life I’m living now.

My Mother was 27 when she had me, her fourth child. That would have been a good age to start a family, would have been. Life doesn’t follow the best laid plans or To Do Lists. Life’s sloppy and there are days when “Mr. I Don’t Fucking Know” is just what I need and I’m happy in that time and space. And there are days when I ask myself what the hell I’m doing and maybe she’s right – but honestly I don’t think you can force it. Life can’t be decided on a whim or a feeling of what the future is going to hold. There are always doubts in defense and offense moves. Which one will work? Which wall will be the strongest and how do you break it down, or do you just walk away from the situation? That’s the easy thing to do.

Life’s not easy.

“No true fiasco ever began as a quest for mere adequacy. A motto of the British Special Air Force is: ‘Those who risk, win.’ A single green vine shoot is able to grow through cement. The Pacific Northwestern salmon beats itself bloody on it’s quest to travel hundreds of miles upstream against the current, with a single purpose, sex of course, but also….life”

-Orland Bloom Elizabethtown