Life…
You wait 20 or more years to find the “perfect” spouse. Someone that you can envision growing old and infirm with. Someone who you can picture living with in the house with the white picket fence, 2.3 kids and a station wagon…or a minivan…or a flexfuel, hybrid SUV.
Well, that day comes. You meet him/her. You date for an unspecified amount of time. Then…you get…ENGAGED.
You plan your wedding. You register at Crate and Barrel, Bed, Bath and Beyond and everywhere else that the two of you decide to register for your plates, bowls, vases, and all the fun things that you get to receive.
You have showers…
You have dinners…
You have the dreaded bachelor/bachelorette parties…strippers and all…
Then the big day…
Two become one…sigh…so in love…smoochie, smoochie…
You go on a honeymoon of some sort…some lavish, some…not so much. But…you are together and about to embark on a new chapter in your lives.
Time to have babies. How many? How close/far apart in age? Because, quite frankly…those are really the only things you can control, when it comes to having children…and not always…depends how careful you are 
You get pregnant…if your lucky…right away.
You start kicking those 2.3 puppies out.
You watch them grow…hopefully you and your “perfect” spouse are still together…
Suddenly…your children aren’t babies anymore. They are in pre-school. Life gets easier. You have free time to work-out…or just work.
After all those years of waiting. Waiting to find out who you’re going to marry. Waiting to get married. Waiting to get pregnant. Waiting to have those babies. Waiting for those babies to start sleeping through the night. Waiting for all the milestones…
You realize…
Your done.
Your done waiting for those things. And now…
You and your spouse start discussing…
which one of you is going to get “fixed”.
Because…there won’t be any more babies…
Not out of the body that is just starting to become old. And…not very firm.(Although, with the Wii fit…hopefully the firm will come back a bit)
And, you realize that the next phase of your life is just beginning.
You are ready to start raising those 2.3 (or in my case, 5) kids into adulthood. To try to teach them to be effective, responsible human beings. To try to teach them to make good choices regarding school, peer pressure, friends…future spouses. And you hope that they learn from you. And that they learn from those around them. And that they take with them all their life lessons…and be as successful as they want to be.
So, the husband makes an appointment. To get snipped. So that there won’t be even the most remote possibility of having to do any more of that kind of waiting…
And that is so strange to me. Because…that choice…although I don’t want anymore kids…is going to be gone. I’m at that stage in my life. It happened to fast. My babies aren’t babies anymore. I’m my parents ages. Although, I’m waaaay cooler and younger than they were at my age!
So now…
I will watch my children wait.
Wait for 20 years or so, to find their “perfect” spouse…
…to plan the weddings…
…and enjoy the festivities…
…and begin their journey to parenthood…
And I will watch. With my not so perfect, yet snipped, spouse.
And I look forward to it.
Because…I’m ready to start the whole new series of my “waitings”.
