old maids

I'm reading one of the "Hamish MacBeth" mysteries right now - Scots policeman who apparently turns the credit for solving hard cases over to others so he can keep his comfortable quiet position in Lochdubh rather than be promoted to somewhere else.

It's the first book that I've read in this series (not the first book OF the series; it was just one I picked up really cheaply at a used-book store. But now I think I will go back and read more of them).

Well, one of the things that comes up in the book is that MacBeth is beginning to think of himself as being akin to an old maid - he's not married, the various love affairs he had in the past fizzled for various reasons. What really brings it home to him is when he realizes he's letting his odd-looking dog and tame wildcat (and I wonder what a Scots wildcat looks like - is it like a little bobcat, or does it look like a Norwegian forest cat?) sleep on the bed with him.

And he's kind of horrified, and virtually decided to ask the woman he's been very casually seeing socially to marry him. (And as it turns out later on in the book - without spoiling too much - that marriage becomes impossible and his infatuation was ill-advised).

And I was thinking about that last night before bed. I AM an old maid. Never married, over 25 (over 35 for that matter), have an independent life. In some ways I even fit the stereotype: my main social activities revolve around church. I knit and sew. I like to put my feet up in the evening and read a book. I don't like movies with sex or large amounts of cursing in them. I am a prude in many ways.

And you know? There's nothing at all wrong with that.

I like my life.

It is a good life. I am very blessed.

My life is quiet and calm and relatively free of bad drama. I may not be raising biological children, but I am hopefully having some sort of beneficial impact on youth and young adults through teaching and youth group. I enjoy my work. I will hopefully leave this world a slightly better place than it would have been had I not been in it. Even if it's just by picking up litter on my street occasionally.

And this is one of those slightly epiphantic moments that I've had the past few years - perhaps the closest I'll come to a midlife crisis is to shed a lot of the unhelpful sorts of silliness I had when I was younger (please God). But realizing that I am HAPPY with my life, not MISERABLE, and that whatever society says about unmarried women over 30 and their problems and their hangups and their probable neuroses-of-a-sexual-nature is not true of me. I'm not desperate to find a man. I don't feel like I'm wasting my life.

Sure, in an alternate universe, it would be NICE to be happily married with children. But that wasn't in the cards for me, for whatever reason (And I'm assuming at 39 - even if I met someone tomorrow and we had a very quick courtship, children probably wouldn't be in the cards for me at this point). But there are a lot of worse things I could be. A single mom with multiple kids each with a different father, none of whom I was married to at any point, trying to scrape to get by, comes to mind.

And so, this is another one of those "society can go get stuffed" moments: society can go get stuffed for telling me that as a single woman over 30 I'm probably really very screwed up in some very strange ways, and that I should be desperately sad that I don't have a man warming my bed each night (and that, to society, in many cases, it matters little whether that man is married to me or not - that it's better to sleep with ANYONE than it is to sleep alone).

Because, as I said before: minimal amounts of bad drama. And you know? That's kind of the tradeoff. You can have an "exciting" life, but with it comes all kinds of tsuris. Or you can have a life where you are so predictable and consistent that when you fail to show up at 7 am the day after vacation, your colleagues figure you must have had some sort of travel delay and go ahead and cancel your classes for you.

And you know? Despite what society seems to say about "exciting" versus "predictable" lives, I like my life. I like the quiet and stability. I think they are highly under-rated in our society.

My life is pretty simple: I get up in the morning. I work out. I get cleaned up, put on my little dress or little skirt and top (or jeans and a blouse if I'm taking a lab out in the field). I go to work. I prep for my classes. I teach. I work a little bit on research. I gab with my colleagues. I go home around 4 or 5, fix a salad or something for dinner, maybe take a shower or do a load of laundry. I maybe watch a little tv if something good's on, or if not, I listen to music and read a book or sew or knit. I get into bed between 8:30 and 9, read for a while, then I go to sleep.

On the weekends I sometimes go antiquing. Or I bake bread. Or I work on a research paper. Or I go to a student art show at the campus gallery. Sunday I go to church; Sunday afternoon I rest and usually work on a quilt.

And it's a good life. Some might call it boring. Some might roll their eyes at how consistent I am in my schedule. But it is good. It is right for me; it works. I just don't quite understand why there seem to be so many in the entertainment and commentary world who are quick to dismiss or ridicule my lifestyle - I do not know if they've tried it or not, but if they haven't, I don't think ridicule is very fair.

As I said before: I think peace and quiet are highly under-rated in our society. So I choose to celebrate the peace and quiet I have in my nice little old-maid life.