I was riding on the top level of a double decker bus in London when I first heard any mention of my "time running out." I was twenty-eight, living in London with my boyfriend, with no idea what I REALLY wanted for my future. I turned to the girl who said to me, "Ahftuh you tuhn thuty five, your eggs staht to go bad," and asked, "where'd ya hear that?"
"From my proffessahs at college."
"Were they old white dudes?"
"Yes..."
"Then, it's invalid."
I learned two years later, living in a small town in Georgia with my NEW boyfriend, and visiting the fancy popular gynecologist in town (who was against birth control because it was "un natural hormones," against anti-depressants because they were working too hard to make me happy, and happily shacked up with a cop with whom she shared a gorgeous incredible country home on the Ettowah river...with a jacuzzi) when I learned that I didn't need to be in any kind of hurry, "just don't get to 39 without knowing for sure that you want kids. It gets harder after forty."
So I thought, SURE. Why not. I've got time.
I then proceeded to break up with my boyfriend, adopt a puppy, and rent a cute house in the middle of the square of a town with perhaps 2 eligible single men. What's a few more years of singledom (That's a word...right)?
It wasn't long after that, that I began to feel it.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
A friend had a baby, and would sit in the room with her and watch while she rocked her little one to sleep and just...I would just mouth breathe.
I'd be lounging in the park every now and then and see this:
And just float off into dream land where I wore excessively low cut white dresses and packed elaborate picnic baskets with organic and gluten free food, and drank wine and ate strawberries while my beautiful daughter(?) did a million cute things that made me swoon, and I never got drunk on the wine, or got any of it on my white dress, and my boobs didn't almost fall out of the dress even once. And there was mist, and sparkles, and narwals, and Enya was playing in the background some song about the poetry of motherhood...in the desert or something.
And then, snap, it would go away and I'd be back in my body, not too concerned with my impending menopause, and kinda terrified at the thought of actually having a baby.
But that was it. That was the extent to which my clock was ticking...until now.
This time, it's different. I'm not swooning too much at seeing a mother and child together. No, this time it's carnal. Every boy is good and beautiful. Every boy that I see...of course, until I talk to them. I don't know if it's Chicago, or what, but I am out of my mind boy crazy and simultaneously out of my mind terrified of any sort of romantic encounter/endeavor. Everywhere I go, they walk past me with their beards, and their chest hair poking out of their collars, and I just want to grab em, and kiss em, and scream:
WE WOULD MAKE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BABY DON'T YOU THINK?!?!
And it's more often now. Like...multiple times in a week...sometimes more than once a day. I mean, I always go back to being terrified at the thought of having kids. Don't worry. It's just that it never happened that often with the mommy baby wonderland world.
Of course, it is now that my nature as a human being is becoming more and more apparent. It is now that I see just how much of an animal, at my roots, I am, which also accounts for the fact that I have never found a friend as good as my dog. I think.
My body wants to procreate. Despite my liberal political leanings and overpopulation mumbo jumbo nonsense, my body wants to continue the species.
IT WANTS TO MULTIPLY. UGH.
What happened to Ms. Independent? She got the mad baby fever and ran, foaming at the mouth, from her shell of independence, tearing at her clothes like one of those zombies that runs instead of limps towards you, except she's reaching for your OTHER brain.
That said, if you're a dude, let me know if you'd like my number. I'm avaaaaaaaaaiiiiiilaaaaaable.
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