I got off the phone with Mom a while ago after making her sit and wait patiently while I dumped my weekly baggage on her for an hour. In between my monologues, she took the opportunity to mention, again—as if my life isn’t already complicated enough—“You KNOW, you’ll be turning 29 soon! Oh my goodness!” Blah Blah. And once again she reminded me how my eggs—you know, my eggs—will only still be fresh for about another year.
“It’s just a fact,” she harped. “I was talking to my-friend-the-OBGYN about it. So many women make the mistake of thinking ‘they can wait’ and that everything will be perfectly fine and then they end up in trouble!”
So then I suggested that for my 29th birthday she and Dad pay to have a few of my eggs frozen. You know, a long-term security deposit, like buying a CD or a mutual fund or something.
“Ummm . . . sure. Daddy and I would pay for that,” she stammered. “We’d do anything for you.”
Let’s say this is me.
This would be me if I had lived in Europe in the 1930s.
.png "Out of Work from Nellie Bly, Trying to Be a Servant, 1887")
This would certainly be me if I had lived in the US in the 1880s.
This is most likely what would have ultimately become of me if I had lived in early modern Europe.
. . . Or maybe this, if I had lived in the English colonies.
This is definitely not me, but I really prefer the more romantic portrayals of aberrant women . . .
And this short story by Idra Novey makes me think of what I’d be like if I had lived in Latin America in the 1970s.
*Images are all from Wiki Commons, and I sure hope they’re on the public domain. Click the image to go to the source.
That conversation about your eggs is going to be spearheaded by the mother-in-law if were to be married and living the “normal” life; did you know?
Ha, Good point . . .