The helpless, I mean hopeless romantic….
My earliest little girl memory is running around my backyard barefoot in a white dress pretending I was a mommy with four kids. I would set up a little kitchen on the side of our swing set and giggle when my invisible husband hugged me from behind when he got home from work. Oddly my parents weren’t role models of affection toward each other nor did I ever see a romantic rendezvous in the kitchen. In fact they had a pretty brutal divorce when I was 8. Nevertheless I have always known the kind of love and romance I wanted, little did I know the blood of a hopeless romantic had been running through my veins since birth. When I became confused with long division or numb with family drama I would escape into the parallel universe of my future husband and family.
Over the years the setting of my fantasy changed. Sometimes we lived in the mountains. Woodsy people in flannels. I drove a van and my husband a truck. My clan was the cutest lumber jacks ya ever did see. Then there was the yuppy dream of a house on the beach a Range Rover, a Benz, $500 strollers and a personal trainer. Though the material stuff always changed there has only been one thing that has stayed consistent through all of my fantasies. Its when my fantasy husband and I watch our kids playing. I’m staring at them totally oblivious to him right next to me, he looks at me with enough love to take a bullet for me and then pulls me tight with one arm and gives me a kiss on the forehead all while I’m laughing at my son doing imitations of a drunk chimpanzee.
Not until recently have I realized how much that childhood visual fantasy and romanticism has shaped my dating life in adulthood. I have seen my friends date a ton of boys and men. They have so many dates during the week that their grocery bills have been narrowed down to toothpaste and tampons. I on the other hand don’t have the “leave no stone unturned” mentality. I don’t believe in dating just to date, or eating dinner with someone just to try the newest Syrah. My friends are just different, they just enjoy the act of getting to know new people. And I guess what makes me different (and sometimes considered a snob) is that I don’t feel the need to date everyone from Aidan to Zeus. I know what I’m looking for, I know what I want and I know if someone doesn’t have it than that’s okay, because my husband is out there and I’ll find him someday.
I believe that its because I feel so strongly that there is a real life “him” or “the one” out there, I feel the need to really preserve my time for him. I mean I pray for my husband daily, wishing him health, strength and faith. When I meet him I want him to know that I waited for him, that I didn’t preoccupy my waiting time by hooking up with tons of guys and I didn’t kill time by going on lots of awkward unromantic dates. I want him to know that I used my time wisely while I waited, that I was careful and diligent in my search for him. That I built my character, that I stayed solid in my faith, that I didn’t settle for less because I knew that that meant taking a step back from finding him.
Ya know you spend a lot of time alone as a hopeless romantic. Your time isn’t consumed with with text messages, shopping for cute clothes or talking to girlfriends about what he said and didn’t say. But, when the time comes that a Hopeless Romantic does fall for someone it makes the butterflies and analyzing so much more nauseating and the term love sick all too true. I think what keeps me grounded between the alone time and the butterfly time is the comfort that God has my back. God created me with the ache to be a mother, with the vision of being a wife, with the need to express myself through writing and the delight in making children smile. I don’t believe God gives us these kind of desires to simply hold them back from us. I think he allows us to find them within ourselves and then follow Him to where they lie.
Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.
-Psalm 37:4
Come on lets make some babies already!!!
A little over a year ago I shuddered at the thought of marriage. I think I even blogged about it here. I said something about kids and suburbans giving me the hives and the only itch ointment that soothed me was clubs and cocktails. Now at the sophisticated age of 25 and 3/4 (Gonna be 26 in like 4 days!!!) I now am craving to make babies. (Actually its only the MAKING part that should really be emphasized by being capped and bolded, but ya know conservative people read this thing. Wouldn’t want to untie any ones shoe laces by stating the obvious.)
So you say, “Go get em’ girl! Saddle up the posse and lets go lasso you a husband!“
But, I say, “Noooooooooooo!!!!!!”
You see I have always been the girl who has rolled her eyes at the boy crazy chicks on the prowl and the insecure 20 somethings looking for husbands. The chicks that do the whole on-line dating thing, the ones that read those dating books for dummies, the ones that asked you to accompany them to bring a friend mixers. “I” have always claimed that “they” had the whole deal all wrong. I would comfortably sprawl out on their chic couches sip my cocktail and say, “You need to pursue your own life not focus on pursuing someone elses. Beside you’re too young and pretty to be covered in flour and baby mucous….lets go party.”
Now, I’m the chick envying the ones with burp cloths. Martha Faulker! What happened?!?! When did the tables turn and who turned them? Well, I have come to the conclusion that Mother Nature herself is the one messin’ with me and making my biological clock heat up faster than a marshmallow over a fire pit. Except my heat is more like that of a feline cat in the middle of Spring in a dark alley. Ughhhh!!!! I have become what I once mocked!
Up until a few months ago I thought that this need to “make babies” was one of a personality trait, not a physical need. I am shocked to see myself bunched up with the rest of the female population. I thought that I was going to be that calm, cool and collected bachelorette kind of chick who didn’t need any of this shiz that everyone was whining about, but alas I am a X Chromosome (woman.) Well, I can’t mess with Mother Nature, but I know myself and I know I also can’t become a women who:
1.) Monopolizes conversations with friends and make them all about my dates, conversations with cute guys and dress lengths.
2.) Fish for comments that stroke my long, brown fair maiden hair and ego.
3.) Analyze every conversation, text message and G-chat with the Y Chromosomes.
However I can:
1.) Go out more with the ladies and just enjoy the fact that I am blessed to have so many amazing friends.
2.) Work on not sending out the “Snob vibe” to men. (Apparently I do. I’ll work on it.)
3.) Be open to all different kinds of people.
4.) Vow to continue to be true to myself and not change and become a what the flavor of the moment wants me to be.
5.) Forget about the fact that I want to “make babies” and instead focus on “making life” I can “make life” better for my friends by being a friend. I can “make life” better for other women by buying a bouquet of flowers and splitting it up into a bunch of little vases and giving them to my co-workers with a little card that says, “Cause I like you.” I can strike up a conversation with my neighbor and learn their name and probably make their day. Or I can get all ambitious and volunteer at Girls Inc. I can “make life” better by reading more amazing books like Heartbreaking Work of Staggering genius or a poetry by Elizabeth Barret Browning. I can “make life” better by giving President Elect Obama my two cents by visiting www.change.gov. I can at least make an effort to make the chages I want to see different in this country and in the lives of my someday babies.
I think that Mother Nature gives us our need “To make.” But, it doesn’t necessarily have to be babies, but I think so many of us have turned to making babies when the urge arises. Who knew we could use our powers for something else like “making” time to take muffins to a shelter? Or making time to learn a new painting technique? And then teaching it to a group of your friends kids. I think the need to “make” is a beautiful part of the human experience. If at the time that this urge arises (at 25 and 3/4) why don’t we focus on “making” our world around us better. I know sooooooooooooooooooo many amazing woman out there with talent in business, law, fashion, writing, poetry, painting, cooking, managing, design and drafting world peace treaties (seriously.) There is an ocean of possiblity of what these women can make while they aren’t “making babies.
I personally vow to “make”:
1.) Time to talk to my neighbors I don’t know and find out their names.
2.) Muffins for my co-workers at the Art Center.
Until its time to “make babies” I’ll be busy “making life”
What are you guys going to make? (Do something with chocolate and then send it to me! Just a suggestion 
xoxox,
HonestChitChat
