No Child of Mine

this weekend i attended my grandpa's funeral in rural north dakota. the city is called rolla and it's way up by the canadian border. things move a bit slower there. everyone gets and stays married. everyone has kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews.

my sister and i are not married. we do not have kids. the point was made that my father is the only child that does not have grandkids. so out of 5 sons and 2 daughters everybody who had a kid also had grandkids, but for my dad.

my sister and i took special pains about this issue. took it upon ourselves to feel really guilty about the state my dad found himself in. he just turned 64 and has advanced parkinson's. i'm not really sure how much my having kids means to him...

i know that my sister and i were raised to do everything at our own speed. we were told repeatedly to wait on marriage, if we were to marry at all. we were told to think carefully about having children, too. my parents were married a full six years before they decided to have children, making my mom 27 and my dad 34 when my sister entered the picture.

i can't even take care of myself. my poor kitty, chaplin never made his 4th birthday. i'm not entirely sure that wasn't due to some mishandling on my part.

my parents married when my mom was 21. if i had married the yutz that i was dating at 21 i think that i would still be paying for divorce court now, five years later.

it might not seem so to my rural north dakotan cousins, but i'm choosing to follow what feels right. i think that it might be nice to be married if the right person showed up. if they never do then i feel safe with idea of spending my old age traveling or catching up on decades of missed reading time...