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Life: An Unspooling [Opinionator.Blogs.NYTimes.com]

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A marriage proposal for a woman at 38 is rarely really a marriage proposal. Or, rather, it’s not a choice of two people; it’s a choice of child or no child. It’s a last chance.

I got engaged on the Mekong River, sitting in the front of a kayak, while my boyfriend attempted to get on one knee behind me. I noticed the sudden trembling of the kayak. The Mekong’s generally not a river you want to fall into. The one knee struck me as provincial in a way that might be appropriate for other women, but not for me. I held my paddle, stared ahead for a moment at the murky brown water. It was dry season. The river was low. I said yes.

I’d had two other marriage proposals. To one, I’d said no. He asked four or five more times, until it got to be a joke between us. He was my dear friend. But I said no every time, then vowed to marry him if I was still single at 40, at 45, at 50. I’m 46 now. My answer would still be no.

I said yes to the other, and then almost immediately regretted it. I was 21, and I didn’t belong anywhere, and I didn’t know how to get out of my acceptance, so I backtracked. We got engaged too soon, I told him. Let’s just date again. We did. We got committed too soon, I told him. Let’s date other people, too. We did. I hoped if I hung around long enough I’d find some way to love him. I didn’t. He came over one day, slump-shouldered, and broke up with me. O.K., I said. I hadn’t even opened the screen door all the way for him.

Two months after I got engaged on the Mekong in my kayak, I was pregnant. I had looked at that little stick and sworn. Because even then I didn’t know.

 

I don’t trust women who are utterly sure they want to have children. I think they haven’t lived inside themselves fully yet. How do they know who they could be, what they could achieve, without children?

And yet I don’t trust women who are utterly sure they never want to have children. I think they haven’t experienced having one, so how could they know?

Maybe is as close as women like me ever come.

 

[For more of this story, written by Rachel Louise Snyder, go to http://opinionator.blogs.nytim...-an-unspooling/?_r=0]

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