It IS my business

There’s a lot of this going around nowadays: ‘It’s not my business.’; ‘As long as s/he’s happy...’ ; ‘S/he’ll hate me if I say something.’ But the question is answered in the Bible: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Yes indeed. Because ‘Happiness’ certainly isn’t the goal of anything. Happiness is transient, like Peace, and Joy...and even Grief. I’m not a Nosy Parker, and certainly do not welcome anyone to get into my business without invitation –still. When something is going on with me, I certainly feel that those people who truly care about me have the right –the duty, even, to stand up and speak. With or without invitation. You don’t leave the people you love alone, even when specifically asked to. You hang around, you call, you send messages –you keep telling or showing them that you’re there, until they realise that a problem shared is a problem halved. And so many problems have solutions. Multiple solutions, strangely invisible to the one who’s in them.

As adults, one of our biggest privileges and greatest burden, is the making of decisions, little and small. And while eating three chocolate bars for dinner may result in increased love handles, deciding to get married, or get divorced, or enter a relationship, or exit a relationship, change one’s job or go back to school... all these and more  set us up on a fateful path. We’re born alone, we die alone, and our paths are our own, but our journey is peppered with pedestrians, some before, some behind, and some just an arm’s length away. To live a good life, you learn, by watching the dude tripping and falling in the far distance, that there’s a rock there, and when you get to that point, you step over or around it. That’s wisdom. Then, you turn and help someone behind you do the same, especially if they’re distracted. That’s just good manners. It’s also good karma, and will come back to you. But the people you connect with, be they a field away, on another path, or walking shoulder to shoulder with you, have a duty to you, just as you have a duty to them. They should run across to you when you’re drowning, just as you should scale up a hill, to bring them safely back down. Discussing you reservations with friends behind their back? It’s not productive. It’s not loving. It’s a temporary relieving your own feelings. It’s selfish.

It’s NOT OK to allow a friend to go out with someone you find creepy or shady, for whatever reason. Naturally, you don’t go right up to them and say it like that (that’s just bad manners,) but after you’ve secretly checked them out, or figured out why you aren’t comfortable about your friend’s wellbeing –share the information with them, however uncomfortable it may be. It may hurt now, but there will be a whole world of future hurt avoided too. It’s not some accident that domestic trouble (be it emotional or physical abuse) goes on behind closed doors, and between couples of whom people will often say “They were SO happy together. The Perfect couple.” Someone always suspects, if they do not actually know. A divorce is like a death –you wish you could have done something. And the truth is, you might have, as a close friend. They do not happen overnight.

If a certain person is not the best choice of partner for your friend –you tell them so, no matter how happy and excited they may be. You encourage them to get a pre-nuptial, if they’re wealthy, you challenge them to ask the hard questions, those that need to be asked when two people are serious about embarking on a life together. You stage an interfriendshion. You protect them any way you can, no matter how strange your actions may seem. You do NOT ‘leave them alone.’ And you do not act like a banshee either. You begin any delicate conversation with: “I am your friend and I love you, and it is as a loving friend that I wanted to just say this:...” And bring up specific behaviour that has made you suspect that his situation isn’t ideal.

And... I have no idea where all this just came from. My pursuit of happiness today was limited to making the perfect egg... I’m almost there.

Hubby and Me

I’m alerted to the fact that Seal and Heidi Klum have ‘separated’ and have decided that my pursuit of happiness must now absolutely take on a direction OTHER than love and marriage. I mean, SERIOUSLY. The status of the institution of marriage has clearly surpassed CRISIS mode, and I feel personally devastated by this last blow...

I have just had a bar of chocolate, and will consider this the peak of my pursuit of happiness for this weekend. I have also sunbathed, had a walk, and am about to enjoy a cup of freshly brewed tea.

Earlier, I tried literally smelling a flower, but it just smelled like... a flower, which I don’t like anyway. Petting my dogs was imminently satisfying, and I’m beginning to think that having a dog might very adequately compensate for having a man, eventually. They’re always affectionate, never leave smelly socks for you to pick up, and never boss you around. It’s perfect, really. He shall be trained to guard myself and the children, and also have the best manners of any dog that ever lived.  I shall call him ‘Hubby’ and tell him about my day over a nightcap, when the children have gone to bed. And when I die, no one could ever say that I was that old woman in the corner who lived with cats. They’ll say I was the one who lived with her Hubby –which actually makes perfect sense.

Stats? 3 old Europeans, including a 50-year old Norwegian, just now, who looks like he has a record. 4 Kenyans, one of whom seems to expect me to jump at the chance of meeting him, and another who wrote to tell me how wonderfully he thinks of himself... I got to the end of paragraph one and closed the browser window. The other two just sound ‘shady’ and I’m learning to respect my instinct. This week, I’ll give myself a mental health break, and not check my accounts at all.

Hans has written me a sweet email, which has cheered me up, and an ex has just sent me a message that says ‘Happy New Year’... which should summarise why we didn’t stay together long.

I mean... Happiness CAN be found elsewhere -right?

A Pin in It

I need to put a sturdy pin in any interaction with my relatives, and press PAUSE to boot, because an older spinster cousin just sent me an email of encouragement on my quest to find Mr Happiness, saying, and I quote:

“... but don’t worry until you find yourself voluntarily taking up crochet.”

I’ve actually been thinking of learning how to knit myself a scarf, and maybe get one done in time for our next Winter (in June). From knitting to crochet is but a step, so I am now battling a spurt of rising panic, wondering if this means anything. DOES IT?

Incidentally, Hans has gone awhol, no doubt because of the excellent first impression I made on him –or perhaps he didn’t like my face. Or my butt. Or perhaps I bored him silly. I know he’s been ill, and that now he’s better, and I didn’t remember his birthday (though he was good enough to tell me after it had passed) but somehow, from what I remember of my personal experience of dating and relationships... there should be more, right? Like more notes, or messages, or something. Still, I have Plan Z, and between A and Z are 24 men to be slotted in within this year, all of whom can’t possibly be disasters.

Or perhaps they will. In which case I shall present myself with a Spinster-For-Life Award (including a fancy dinner for one and lots of champagne), and give up on the whole thing in favour of ‘good works’ ...and crochet. It’s traditional, after all, and I’m a traditional girl. That’s what spinsters did, in the 100s. They became charity workers and nurses and care givers, lavishing (or in some cases unleashing) their love everywhere else that they possibly could, since a man and children were no longer a viable option. In my case, happily, a child will always be an option, and I have every intention of adopting, whenever I get to that place where I am able to offer a good, stable life for a beautiful child with Mozart-, Neureyev-, Michelangelo- AND/OR Einstein-like potential. Hopefully. Or maybe they’ll just be average, which is fine, because average people tend to surprise you. I might be a little strict about the friends s/he hangs out with, though, because no child of mine is going to surprise me with a talent for pickpocketing or conmanship. No siree.

Recent developments? Really? Yeah, OK. I got an email from this dude (this is verbatim,  copied and pasted, I SWEAR):

“hi i saw your profile and I really like it wants to meet you, guido looking serious relationship kiss to start family”

I have no comment. NONE.

ENOUGH

So... I’m pouting again, but over a WHOLE other issue.

I’m at my Aunt’s this weekend, and we’re giggling about my so-called ‘prospects’ on the Net, and she’s pointing at a 75-year old with a spicy resumé, saying: “If you had children with him, they would be born 40.” I remonstrate with her, telling her that old people are people too, but when I go into the bathroom half an hour later, the joke hits me and I laugh hysterically for a good ten minutes. Then I come out and SHE’s pouting. The matter? Well, just the little one of one of her best friends (of many, many years, since they’re both in their late 60s)... is getting remarried.

Now, remarriage is generally frowned upon in Kenya, for anyone who wasn’t tragically widowed or divorced when they were very young, especially when they have children, and most certainly when they’re wealthy. But then there’s the matter of the suitability of the groom, and apparently the general consensus among their clique of friends and family (and unknown to the bride, naturally –and you thought gossip ended in high school) is that he is TOTALLY unsuitable. One of the most respected members of the family has indeed gravely pronounced the fact, and his view has carried serious weight. He is male though, and whatever his reasons, the women have an unending list of their own, headed by the fact that the man has a weak chin. I’m trying not to smile at this stage, because, aside from the fact that this is right out of Jane Austen... who can see a weak chin beneath all those folds? Still, there it is. And it is going ahead. The bride-to-be’s friends are thoroughly shocked, and deliciously a-flutter for the first time in YEARS. I’m thinking (as you do when you’re a writer, and completely wrapped up in your own issues, so that everything really applies to you –or should) WHAT THE HELL? She’s getting ANOTHER round? Where’s MY FIRST?

And I could have digested this and let it go eventually... except last night, I’m watching one of my favoured murder shows (Neighbour-Next-Door) and there’s this 85-year old victim at the centre of the reported tragedy –and even SHE was engaged, at the time of her death. I’m not even sure I absorbed the rest of the story, I was so outraged. I mean, ENOUGH already, ‘Universe’, I GET the message. And I AM trying to get off the shelf, honest... not very hard, but still trying.

My Aunt says that it will come when it will, and I should think of and do other things –which is certainly what I’m doing. I’m not reading Fairy Tales or watching the gate for a random White Horse (which are actually grey, and anyway, I prefer bays.)

So I’m pouting again. But only for a moment or two, because I may have identified my Plan Z for the year: a 58-year old Ausi who is waiting for me to fly over to him and get on the back of his Harley Davidson, so that we can (literally) ride into the sunset together... before having a couple of Ausi kids who will no doubt drive me mad with their love of bushwacking and walkabouting, when I can’t even handle the idea of camping out anywhere. 

A Slightly Green Tinge

So... one of my girlfriends is pregnant. She’s with child. She’s cooking up a person in her God-given oven. She’s... going to be a mother. And she’s not in a relationship; this was an accident. An ACCIDENT.

So my first response is EWWW... WHO is having unprotected sex in THESE days? Then I thought of my friend and decided that it was more likely a Ross and Rachel (Friends) situation, the 1% time that a condom doesn’t work. Then I thought that if she had even suspected this, she could have gone and gotten the morning after pill. And also a battery of tests. Because now, in a few short months, there’ll be a whole new person walking about in her life. A whole new person that she’ll be responsible for, for the rest of her life. A whole new person who will first look up at her, then make her life the epitome of the battle between good and evil.

There will be dirty diapers, and breastfeeding, and napping, and exhaustion. There’ll be battling the tendency of throwing the child out of the window after an afternoon of non-stop screaming, and the zombie-like sleeplessness of watching them sleep because she’s terrified of cot death. There’ll be the uncomfortable teething period, the graduation from crawling to standing, the panic of finding them wondering what a socket is for. There’ll be the separating them from another child’s hair, and teaching them how to share toys. There’ll be potty training, and a training to eliminate tantrums, and a new level of patience developed because of an extended period of them following her around asking ‘Why?’ after every answer.

In 13 short years, she will be conducting insane negotiations about curfew with a rude, pierced, marijuana-experimenting teenager who doesn’t want to go to college, but rather wants to take their ‘rock band’ to the world stage. There will be inappropriate girlfriends or criminally-minded boyfriends being sneaked into her house, where, the day after she’s done her weekly grocery shopping, the fridge will be half-empty. There will be doctor’s appointments and PTAs, and hockey or football games to attend, and headmasters to deal with and essays to correct, and tutors to be hired.

It’s sickening, and scary, and no wonder she looks like she’s about to pass out from shock any moment. Except she also looks more beautiful than she ever has. Her skin is l’Oreal perfect, and, unconsciously, once in a while, she does this thing where she passes a possessive, protective hand over her lower abdomen and smiles distantly. It’s distracting and annoying, and I won’t be seeing her for a good while.

...You get that I’m totally and completely and utterly JEALOUS, right? There is a distinctly green tinge to my face which is ANYTHING but l’Oreal, and after this, I’m giving myself an hour to pout. Just one.

Take Me As I Am

There is a Weddingcratic Oath amongst couples that your wedding day is the “Happiest Day Of Your Life”. It is also a blatant lie, no doubt originated by married couples in the 100s to encourage young people to marry since, through wedding planner documentaries and our real experiences (as bride, groom, or participant) we now know that it is actually the Most Stressful Day of Your Life, and only the culmination of a long series of Stressful Days no one would wish upon their enemy. That snapshot? You know, the one of the couple beaming as they stand close together on an anonymous lawn, the picture of All That Is Good In The World? It’s the biggest lie of all.

In a marriage, things are supposed to progress from the wedding day –not regress. As a guy friend of mine once put it, whilst arguing why he would divorce his wife for putting on weight, “I took her as she was –she’s not supposed to change, and change the rules.” Yet, change is the Constant of Life. People WILL grow, physically, mentally as well as emotionally, notably through parenthood. They’re supposed to evolve –I’d go as far as to say that we’re programmed to evolve. So ‘taking someone as they are’ on their wedding day (not on any other) actually implies acceptance of the fact that that someone will change. That couples do not realise the fact is perhaps reflected in the huge change that the institution of marriage has suffered over recent years.

The truth is coming out, however, the way it usually does, not only through shockers such as 72-day marriages, but also by the social manifestation of any number of excuses for Not Getting Married, nowadays. Couples apparently need to ‘test drive’ their relationship by living together first, to see if the niggling doubts they might harbour will go away. If the fact that one is messy, is a workaholic and doesn’t cook will not run a partner off, parents may have some hope for a wedding taking place –but only after the couple has additionally test-driven having a child... or two.

At this point, a reasonable person might wonder why a wedding would ever be undertaken, since all of the components of a marriage are already present. Laws, as they are supposed to do, have evolved with and adapted to this social phenomenon of men not buying the cow with free milk amply available. They are helping couples to develop new reasons for not getting married, by protecting each of their interests and their offspring, through something called ‘Common Law Partnership’ rules and regulations –which are basically a new set of marriage rules. If it makes couples feel better to be married under a title that is not ‘Marriage’, I guess the Law is happy to accommodate them. A Swedish man I corresponded with briefly virtually told me that this is the status quo in Sweden, where couples can live together as man and wife for over a decade, and never take that final step.

Ironically, separation after 12 years of non-marriage is just as chaotic as going through a divorce, except even more so, since it must be determined who owns what before each Single Person can carry away what is rightfully theirs. People forget that marriage not only unites, but also protects.

I argued to my guy friend that, if one was willing to take someone through sickness and health... would he divorce his wife for getting so ill that she became a paraplegic? He was forced to change the subject, because his answer was ‘Yes’, and he didn’t want to seem shallow, which he is. And many others are. In this day of instant gratification, a non-functional partner is an inconvenience. So if he comes back from the war with mental problems, perhaps the wise thing to do is to let him deal with them alone, while we look for greener pastures. Our instinct for self-preservation now includes social preservation, and is more alive and well today than it has been since our days of discovering fire in the caves.  Girls want men who make money, and guys want hot girls. That either business or the economy might crash, or her looks fade, are not the stuff of the Perfect Wedding Day Snapshot.

Divorce is the instant remedy for THAT. Someone better will surely come along. It’s not personal, it’s business. It’s survival.

Perhaps, then, it IS best that Marriage be reserved for those people who truly understand its implications, and the real Commitment demanded of them. Those willing, even, to go through an analysis, either on their own, or through pre-counselling, to understand how they will conduct their relationship in such a manner as to make it a lifelong friendship. The rest can deal with their Common Law Partnerships and Pretence. I and YOU, should look for the Real Thing.

Men are in Luck –Women will date Anything!

When I was five or six, I had the very first ‘boyfriend’ that I can remember... Eric. I remember that we came together because we were both the first-borns of our families, tasked with the responsibility of taking care of our siblings, both of whom were in the same class, and at the very start of pre-school. We discovered each other and these remarkable coincidences when we both sat at the same bench, one break-time, keeping an eagle eye on our siblings.

To this day, I clearly remember feeling able to stare at him for DAYS on end, like I would an original Van Gogh. For Eric was GORGEOUS. I remember his perfect shock of chocolate-brown hair, and matching chocolate-brown eyes, which were wide and warm, and beautiful. I think he was the first and last ‘GORGEOUS’ boy I’ve ever ‘been with.’ Since then, somehow... I can’t really tell.

Hans and I were discussing the other day how our perceptions of Beauty have shifted, as we’ve grown older, but, at college, while still in my discriminative days, I was regularly shocked by what my friends and roommates presented to me as ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’. I truly don’t know why any man would feel insecure –in reality, girls are ruled by their emotions, which colour and shift and distort their actual vision, so that, however unacceptable your looks might be to one girl (or even the world at large), three more would be quite willing to swoon for a moment of your attention. And sometimes, even if they don’t initially find you good-looking, all you have to do (if you are a man of substance) is open your mouth, for your entire appearance to change into that of a Prince. Women!

I had a gorgeous Italian girlfriend, in college, who could literally have had ANY man she smiled at... I won’t tell you how I felt when she came to visit me with Simon, whom she’d described to me over the phone as “... and he’s SO attractive, Ciggie –he’s BEAUTIFUL!!”

He was extremely tall, and gangly with it (no crime at all.) After an hour or so, I was able to perceive that he had very kind, warm brown eyes. But it had taken that long, not because he was unpleasant (indeed, he was mannerful, soft-spoken, smart, generally lovely, and just right for Laura) but because no matter what I did, or how many times I reminded myself of my manners, I just could NOT tear my eyes away from his nose, which was large... and broken.

Within that first hour, I had introduced myself to his nose, offered it coffee and biscuits, asked it how it liked its coffee, handed it a mug, and laughed politely at its jokes. It was only when his personality began sinking in that I was able to see beyond it, and even then, when Laura called me later for a What-Did-You-Think Report, the first thing I asked her was... ‘What is with the NOSE?’ Her answer literally made me sit down.

“Isn’t it WONDERFUL!!!” She gushed, giggling madly, “I just LOVE broken noses –don’t you?”

I don’t think I asked another question.

Another girlfriend ‘loved’ a man that looked that the dictionary’s definition of a twerp. Short, thin and bespectacled, he was alternatively mute or inaudible, which last drives me NUTS. I mean, I understand shyness, awkwardness –and even geekiness has its charm. But this thing seemed to have absolutely nothing to say for himself. For the two hours I had to bear his presence without relief, on our first meeting, it was like my friend had come over alone. And naturally, she was one of these bubbly, happy beauties you’d think would fall for a tall, hardy life-of-the-party type (which, incidentally, I instinctively distrust. It’s just as suspicious to assert yourself too much as not to at all.)

I don’t remember him much now, but I believe I did warm up to him a little eventually... but only because I tend to. I could NEVER believe that they would last, and expected, every time I saw her, to be told that she’d seen the light. And naturally, I couldn’t tell her anything about him except that I totally approved (OH WHY do we girls DO that?!!) when I was really thinking that he was a serial killer in the making. I don’t remember what eventually happened with them, but wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they were married with six kids. Life’s funny like that, and so are our impressions of people.

Yet another girlfriend dated someone whom I could only describe as... well, a clown. The freaky horror movie type –without makeup. A tall, LARGE man. Everything about him. Improbably BUSHY eyebrows, BULGING eyes, WIDE, flat nose, a HUGE bottom lip and no upper... LARGE teeth. LOUD, and BOSSY, and OBNOXIOUS (and sometimes funny, that’s true.) And when he sat down, he spread himself all over the place... I disliked him so, I congratulated her when they broke up, telling her, with the cruel blatancy of youth:

“What if you’d gotten pregnant by that thing? Do you realise what would have come out?”

I was speechless when she burst into tears, informing me that he’d dumped her... for someone else. I’ve dated my share of lizards (then wondered at myself) but, I hope, never a living clown.

Models are plain, as a standard, because they work as the canvases on which fashion-makers need to write their own script. Yet they are uniformly spoken of as ‘stunning’ (please don’t believe ANYTHING said on TV any more, by the way, because apparently everyone semi-famous is ‘gorgeous’ and that is DEFINITELY not the case. At least, objectively.)

Actors and actresses, on the other hand, are lovely to look at, because they come in all shapes and sizes, and may become attractive or less, so based on their characters. (Willem Dafoe is a GREAT case in point.) And I think that’s what Beauty is really like. Like Grief, it looks different on everyone. It isn’t shallow to say or think that ‘Looks matter’. They DO. But they’re also relative, and change with personality.

The way people say that someone isn’t good-looking is by referring to their personality. “Is so-and-so good-looking?” “So-and-so is a WONDERFUL person. So interesting and so kind!” And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. There’s much, much more to Life. And having an interesting personality makes you attractive –which is much better for you than simply being pretty. Beauty fades, as you might recall... and all that’s left is personality.

Still, the kind of Beauty anyone should look for in a partner, is the enduring kind; not objectively, but rather personally beheld. Agatha Christie once advised girls to consider how they feel about their potential partner when he has a cold (I think this goes for guys too!) If you’re still attracted to them, you’re on the right track!