The Assumption

You’ve just finished dinner with your darling, the dishes you washed up together, two cups, two plates, and two sets of silver, he washed, you dried. The pans left to soak as things get hotter in the kitchen over the last sips of wine you had saved for some special occasion. This quickly leads hands up skirts and upstairs bedroom. You’ve strip teased each others clothes off he lay on top of you and just about to…

“Knock knock knock” You hear on your bedroom door.
“Mommmmy…Daaaddddy……...I peed the bed.” Great! Your romantic evening with your darling is interrupted once again.

***

I don’t understand “The American Dream.”

Being a woman it is often assumed I will marry and have children. The subject comes up frequently working in the public, they are a nosey bunch; older ladies especially. I explain that I don’t want such things for my life.

Their usual responses assure me that I’ll change my mind later on. I am frowned upon; it be shameful to be a woman who ends up husbandless and without child.

I tend not to get into the details of why not. I mean I don’t go around asking strangers if they have children and why they do. So I politely change the topic.

***

But if I were to respond to that loaded question of why not:

Firstly, it would begin with the simple fact that it is assumed that because I am a woman, that these are the things I should strive for in my life. There is more to life than having babies and husbands and minivans. Little girls are conditioned to believe in such things.

They are given dolls to take care of, they are taught how to hold them and feed them. They watch stories that tell tall tales about princes and happily ever afters. They are given Barbie dolls to play with. They make Ken kiss Barbie at their wedding and then rub their parts together, thinking it will make a baby.

There are approximately 490,000 babies born everyday around the world. Aren’t there plenty of babies on this planet by now, plenty of birth control methods and education on the subject?

Secondly, I would address marriage.

Back in the day a marriage was a way to gain something from the union of daughters to sons, the blending of families to gain wealth, status, or materials. Women were commodities and marriages were arranged in logical fashions based upon social hierarchies. Husbands picked by fathers with the best for the majority in mind.

“Marriage” in the cultural understanding of the twenty first century means
“wedding,” And a ring.

When a woman gets engaged the first thing she does is flaunt her rock; her honey probably couldn’t afford and bought it anyhow. The first question asked to her:

“When’s the wedding?”

So the bride to be proceeds booking the caterers, the church, the reception and the honeymoon. Then first purchase, the dress; to worn one day, then stuffed in the closet as a souvenir that never returns on the investment.

A marriage only requires a license, a notary public and a witness. None of the fan-fair is needed to pronounce the union of man and wife.

Nowadays marriages gain debt. They are licenses, financial contracts, and ways to get tax cuts, (as are children.) Most newlyweds begin their life as husband and wife in debt.

A married woman no longer addresses her self as a woman or an individual, but as Mr. and Mrs. Or as Mr.’s Wife, her identity now associates her with a man. Not to mention that she drops the name of one man for another, and wears his ring to signify her ownership; for some resembles collar.

Thirdly, I would address the duties of a mother and the effects on a couple.

It starts at the crack of dawn, and ends past bedtime more or less. I hate to imagine spending my days listening to it all. The crying, the tantrums, and the toys relatives gave as gifts unapproved by you that flash and zing and rattle with noise. The screaming in the car as you pass the fake-food restaurant running errands in town, driving around in that god damn minivan.

I dread the thought of the cleaning; the spit up and the drool, the dirty diapers and the wippie dipes, the messes in the bedrooms and the bathrooms. The piles of laundry covered in who knows what. Is that poop?

The dishes in the sink and the milk crusted inside the straw attached to the bowl. How much time will it take to clean that out of there? Or the permanent marker Mr. Clean won’t take of the wall.

Think of the money on education, sports, extra curricular activities, Friday nights at the mall, the gas for the minivan. Birthdays, Christmas’, graduations.They say raising a child from birth to adulthood will cost 140,000. Think about that. Sounds like a farm house with a studio to me.

Think of the worry,on the mother, on the baby, on the father involved. The pregnancy,the doctors visits, the delivery room, the labor.

The changing of the body, the female figure widens, sags and is stretched with marks. The poor vagina no longer just a receiver, for it has given. They say most women are "less pleased" with their vagina's a year after giving birth.

***

“The American Dream?” It sounds like a nightmare to me.

Not really a response you can give while warming cups coffees for older ladies.

Which brings me back to hot nights in the kitchen long after dinner was over, those love birds could have just pounced on each other right there at the kitchen sink, if it weren’t for those kids tucked away peeing in their beds. I assure you, there is much more to life than babies and husbands and minivans.