One Good Egg: An Illustrated Memoir (2 page)

“That’s right.” Not forty-eight, seventy-eight, or 138. Just plain thirty-eight.

Mary, I’m a dreamer, not a smoker.

“She can see you on March 29th.”

And I want you to know, I’m not one of those OMG-I-forgot-to-have-a-baby thirty-eights. It’s just that life does not always go as planned.

Let’s start with how I had been planning on having a career in international relations, then spring of my senior year, weeks away from earning degrees in International Relations and Economics, I discovered my favorite class at Brown.

Jane will be quite an old maid soon . . . she is almost three and twenty! Lord, how ashamed I should be of not being married before three and twenty!

J
ANE
A
USTEN

Pride and Prejudice

I ended up living with my parents for a few months after the bike trip, and then I moved up to Boston, where I had a very short career as a copywriter.

Then I left advertising to start a greeting card company. That partnership went bad inside of six months. I mention it, Mary, because I think it is the only other big life decision I’d ever made. I had to come up with a lot of money to buy the business, or else walk away.

Actually, it wasn’t the only other big life decision, but the third one didn’t feel like a decision. It felt like falling in love. That winter I was living at home, I had my first romantic relationship with a woman—Amy, the leader of the cross-country bike ride. She was the other reason I moved to Boston. To put 250 miles between us, so I could make up my mind whether I wanted to be with a man or with Amy.

I dated a half dozen very nice men in Boston, but I was in love with Amy.

Wait, Mary, before you put me in a box—

say Amy was Andy, or Arnie,

Arthur,

Adam

—a lot of my story could pass for infertile-straight.

Amy and I moved in together. We found the perfect place: a carriage house with a garage (for all the greeting cards), a basement office with separate entry, and a second bedroom that could double as Amy’s office
or
a nursery.

Fast-forward to age thirty. I had everything in place—the relationship, the career, the house. Then I went and fell in love with a funny folksinger who was also all but married and didn’t want anything to do with kids.

Mary, some of your silences strike me as judgmental even though I know you mean to be respectful.

I dated men, I dated women. I gave up on dating. I decided to have a baby alone, and then the father’s offer fell through.

At that point, I was thirty-four, the same age as my mother when she had me. People were giving up on my marriage prospects. My friends thought I was too picky and didn’t mind saying so. My handyman said, “Sue, after thirty, you start to get set in your ways. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, it just gets too hard to live with someone else.” I’m hearing him. I’m hearing everybody. And I’m hearing my biological clock ticking. I know I really have to make this decision.