While Waiting for My Husband

While Waiting For My Husband I was to have a husband; that was known from the minute of my birth, a 6 lb. 3 oz. brown baby girl with glistening black curls. As I came screaming, with tightly clinched fists, my parents envisioned a wedding and the laughter of grandchildren. Fantasy, play, and dreams prepared me for my established future. I was my mother’s eager little apprentice, learning to cook, clean, and sew. Sears catalog cutouts provided the furnishings for my future home. My house, as I dreamed it, would be pale yellow with a white picket fence. Roses of every color would line the front of the house. The backyard would be for my children to play their grass-destroying games. The dog, a wondering mutt brought home by my son (“Can we keep him, Mom, please?”), would run off with the children’s balls, disrupting their play while I laughed from the kitchen window. We would invite our neighbors to barbeques to show off my husband’s grilling skills. My husband, tall with smooth Hershey candy bar dark skin, would be the school principal where I taught first grade. I would stop teaching when we married to be a housewife. My house would be spotless. The laundry would be clean, perfectly ironed, and neatly put in place. Every meal would be prepared from scratch and served piping hot when my husband walked in from work. Our marriage would be perfect and our love deeper than any ocean. As I waited for my husband, I worked low paying jobs that would end once he came along. I would give birth to three children. The first, a son, would be named after his father. The next two would be girls whose lives would be enveloped in pink. My son would learn to build birdhouses using saws, hammers and nails. With his father he would camp, fish, and watch sports. My daughters would help me in the kitchen. I would teach them to bake sugar cookies and to embroider table dollies as my mother had taught me. My family would be perfect in our yellow house with the white picket fence. As I waited for my husband, I traveled, staying in cheap college dorm rooms with shared baths. Once married, I would stay in five-star hotels and eat in fine restaurants. With my husband I would travel the world over, taking our children to museums, art galleries, and theme parks. I would teach them about great artists and art. They would smile, squealing, “Look, Mom, look at that!” Waiting for my husband, I moved from place to place, dated man after man, hoping he would be the one to sweep me away. But after lying naked and wet in their arms they would leave, forgetting my name in their rush to dress. I would go through my closet and remove the clothes I bought to please him because the next man wanted a different type of dress with slits and shimmers. My husband would run for city office. I would take care of designing the pamphlets, schedule engagements, and host political events. These events would be graced with the sparking crystal and the beautiful teacups I would have decoratively stored in the china cabinet. When he gives his acceptance speech I would proudly stand behind him and a little to his right. While I wait for my husband, I do things for the men I meet because they may be the one and, because of them, I now must not dream of a man who wants to run for city office because of the past I am forming. When I am old I would have grandchildren to brighten my eyes. They and my children would stand by me as my husband is laid to rest. My son and son-in-law would help me rise to walk back to the long black limousine. My hands would shake with age but my memories would be so loving and wonderfully beautiful with the husband I waited for to give my life to. At 40 I go to school, but when he comes my life will begin. I enroll in college. There I looked for him but instead of finding him - I graduated. I go to graduate school, a better place to find my husband. Again I graduate instead. And then a Ph.D., still looking; still sure he will come and I will have a yellow house with a white picket fence, roses and teacups like the cups I remember that were in my grandmother’s house. While I waited for my husband my time was running out to have children. I would have two children, a boy and a girl who would grow up to go to college, marry, and have children. At 50 I looked around and realized that, as with my life, my house held no sign of a man, a husband - just me. I worked as a professional woman in a meaningful job. I bought a yellow house with a white picket fence. I planted a rose garden and filled my china cabinet with sparkling crystal and beautiful fine china tea cups. I travel and sleep in five star hotels and dine in fine restaurants. I no longer wait for my husband. I adopt a daughter with big round brown eyes and shiny dark pigtails tied with pink ribbons. Her skinny arms encircle my neck as she kisses my cheek with a touch so soft and light. I name her “Dare” and teach her to live life and to not wait for a husband.