Grandbabies, NOW!
My Sunday column about my Granny trying to order babies out of me like people order dollars out of an ATM ...
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A few weekends ago I had to endure my grandmother telling me that I needed to have some babies with the sort of urgency you only hear in monster truck commercials and weather alerts.
I was almost 30! She’d heard I’d stopped dating! She wanted more grandchildren!
Nevermind that we’d had this conversation before or that she had nine children herself and literally has an army’s worth of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. And it wasn’t good enough that one of my cousins had just had a baby.
I hadn’t had a baby. She wanted to see my progeny. I needed to jump into someone right now, put a gun to their head, make them marry me and get to getting her some great-grandbabies!
Love her to death, but right now? That’s not going to happen.
I talked to my eldest sister, Denise, who is also unmarried and childless, about this. She’s 31 years old and for whatever reason, my grandmother has not lectured her about this. (Hey, I at least got married and horribly failed at it. I should get some brownie points.) But we mostly chatted about how it was strange this was coming from our grandmother and not our parents who have never once asked where their son-in-laws and grandbabies were. They’ve never done it. Hasn’t come up.
I asked my mother when she came to visit me in March if she wished she were a grandmother. All her friends were doing it. She sort of shrugged it off. I wasn’t surprised.
Neither one of my parents talked to me or my sisters about marriage. They talked about mortgage — but marriage? I think I’ve heard more terse “tut-tutting” over being a renter versus a homeowner than my chronic singledom. And nearly every stern lecture of my childhood ended with “go to school” or “go to college” or a shoutout to savings accounts, 401(k)s and stock options.
The National Associations of Realtors reported back in 2003 that single women made up the second largest group of home buyers and most experts say that’s because women are more educated, making more money and waiting longer to get married — all things my parents largely advocated back when I was pimple-faced and surly.
So basically, my parents engineered their daughters in a way that would ensure we would not get married or have babies in an expedient manner. Thus ensuring that big sister Denise is more likely to wake up in the middle of the night shouting “Oh no! I forgot to diversify the stock portfolio” than “Oops! I forgot to have the baby.”
But I suppose if I really tried, really made an honest effort and got back out there and blah, blah, blah ... Nah. I’m too lazy. And besides, she wants me to get hitched right now and the only folks I have a chance at a fast marital turnaround with are death row inmates or fellow bitter divorcees, just as broke and with just as much financial debt and emotional baggage as myself.
Convicted killer Scott Peterson was only in San Quentin State Prison for less than an hour and he already had marriage proposals.
Nevermind he’s on death row for murdering his pregnant wife, the warden’s office got three dozen phone calls from women who wanted to be the future Mrs. Peterson.
As for marrying the fella who’s been down that aisle before, the U.S. Census shows that divorced men remarry faster than their female counterparts. Author Leslie Fram even wrote a book about it that my grandmother is probably trying to figure out how to mail to me right now. It’s called “How to Marry a Divorced Man” and it’s all about taking someone else’s leftovers and making a fine casserole out of it.
Being a leftover myself, I don’t know how I really feel about that book or its title as I find all books promising to bring you a lover, husband, home, car, infinite fame, friends and riches akin to spam, Internet pop- ups and bad silicone implants — they all ring horribly false.
As for whether a desire for coupling exists inside of me, a “well-duh, of course it does” answer is what rapidly surfaces. Who doesn’t want to? You’d have to be crazy. I just want my grandmother to stop ordering children out of my womb like I’m some fast-food drive-through menu with bad speakers.
I want her to yell at the people who are really responsible for this — her daughter and son-in-law. My mother, by early 1970s definition was an “old maid” at 25 when she married my father. What’s considered the proper age for an “old maid” now? I’m 27 so I’m just going to say it’s not 27. And how old are you? Thirty? Thirty-five? Forty?
Yeah, I probably won’t be married by then either so, no, tell them Danielle Belton said you’re not old maids either. The term’s archaic anyway. You’re part of a hot new trend. The “50 is the new 30” trend. Now go have fun buying up houses and not having babies.
No matter what she says, your granny will still love you.
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A few weekends ago I had to endure my grandmother telling me that I needed to have some babies with the sort of urgency you only hear in monster truck commercials and weather alerts.
I was almost 30! She’d heard I’d stopped dating! She wanted more grandchildren!
Nevermind that we’d had this conversation before or that she had nine children herself and literally has an army’s worth of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. And it wasn’t good enough that one of my cousins had just had a baby.
I hadn’t had a baby. She wanted to see my progeny. I needed to jump into someone right now, put a gun to their head, make them marry me and get to getting her some great-grandbabies!
Love her to death, but right now? That’s not going to happen.
I talked to my eldest sister, Denise, who is also unmarried and childless, about this. She’s 31 years old and for whatever reason, my grandmother has not lectured her about this. (Hey, I at least got married and horribly failed at it. I should get some brownie points.) But we mostly chatted about how it was strange this was coming from our grandmother and not our parents who have never once asked where their son-in-laws and grandbabies were. They’ve never done it. Hasn’t come up.
I asked my mother when she came to visit me in March if she wished she were a grandmother. All her friends were doing it. She sort of shrugged it off. I wasn’t surprised.
Neither one of my parents talked to me or my sisters about marriage. They talked about mortgage — but marriage? I think I’ve heard more terse “tut-tutting” over being a renter versus a homeowner than my chronic singledom. And nearly every stern lecture of my childhood ended with “go to school” or “go to college” or a shoutout to savings accounts, 401(k)s and stock options.
The National Associations of Realtors reported back in 2003 that single women made up the second largest group of home buyers and most experts say that’s because women are more educated, making more money and waiting longer to get married — all things my parents largely advocated back when I was pimple-faced and surly.
So basically, my parents engineered their daughters in a way that would ensure we would not get married or have babies in an expedient manner. Thus ensuring that big sister Denise is more likely to wake up in the middle of the night shouting “Oh no! I forgot to diversify the stock portfolio” than “Oops! I forgot to have the baby.”
But I suppose if I really tried, really made an honest effort and got back out there and blah, blah, blah ... Nah. I’m too lazy. And besides, she wants me to get hitched right now and the only folks I have a chance at a fast marital turnaround with are death row inmates or fellow bitter divorcees, just as broke and with just as much financial debt and emotional baggage as myself.
Convicted killer Scott Peterson was only in San Quentin State Prison for less than an hour and he already had marriage proposals.
Nevermind he’s on death row for murdering his pregnant wife, the warden’s office got three dozen phone calls from women who wanted to be the future Mrs. Peterson.
As for marrying the fella who’s been down that aisle before, the U.S. Census shows that divorced men remarry faster than their female counterparts. Author Leslie Fram even wrote a book about it that my grandmother is probably trying to figure out how to mail to me right now. It’s called “How to Marry a Divorced Man” and it’s all about taking someone else’s leftovers and making a fine casserole out of it.
Being a leftover myself, I don’t know how I really feel about that book or its title as I find all books promising to bring you a lover, husband, home, car, infinite fame, friends and riches akin to spam, Internet pop- ups and bad silicone implants — they all ring horribly false.
As for whether a desire for coupling exists inside of me, a “well-duh, of course it does” answer is what rapidly surfaces. Who doesn’t want to? You’d have to be crazy. I just want my grandmother to stop ordering children out of my womb like I’m some fast-food drive-through menu with bad speakers.
I want her to yell at the people who are really responsible for this — her daughter and son-in-law. My mother, by early 1970s definition was an “old maid” at 25 when she married my father. What’s considered the proper age for an “old maid” now? I’m 27 so I’m just going to say it’s not 27. And how old are you? Thirty? Thirty-five? Forty?
Yeah, I probably won’t be married by then either so, no, tell them Danielle Belton said you’re not old maids either. The term’s archaic anyway. You’re part of a hot new trend. The “50 is the new 30” trend. Now go have fun buying up houses and not having babies.
No matter what she says, your granny will still love you.
posted by Danielle Belton @ 9:42 AM
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