“It is only normal human nature to want to marry and procreate.” – My college advisor, 1978
Today is a very strange day for me. If I had stayed married to my ex-husband, today would be our 30th anniversary. In retrospect, I got married young, at the age of 24. In retrospect, it feels like our wedding was yesterday, 50 years ago, and never happened.
Growing up, I really didn’t think about marriage very much. I never had the vision of the knight in shining armor, the two kids and the house with the white picket fence, or being a soccer mom. I assumed I would get married and have children (that’s what people do, after all), but it was never the first thing on my mind. I thought more about pitching for the Mets, being a professional boxer, or writing a sports column for the New York Times. (Talk about missed clues!)
I entered college in the fall of 1976, and it surprised me how so many of my female classmates were focused on their “Mrs.” Degree. Some dropped out after only a few weeks because they missed their boyfriends back home. I enjoyed college life – from marching band to softball (another clue!) to pledging a sorority – and while I dated a bit, I was not looking for a husband. First of all, there were just too many to choose from; I couldn’t imagine how you could narrow down the field. And, more importantly, I still had that uncomfortable feeling I had since I was young that there was something different about me that did not include the desire to find a husband and settle down into domestic bliss.
My high school was very small; there were 99 in my graduating class, and while there were several thousand in my class at college, after a few semesters, it too felt stifling. I decided I wanted to drop out of school. I didn’t know what I would do; I just knew I didn’t want to be in school anymore. I went to see my advisor and told him I felt out of place because I wasn’t looking for a husband. He looked over his glasses and said in his Kentucky accent, “Why Doreen, it is only normal human nature to want to marry and procreate.”
Wow, that was helpful. Continue reading
