This morning the alarm on my mobile phone went off half an hour before my alarm clock was supposed to, which was odd because I didn’t remember setting it the night before. I usually only set my phone alarm when I have an early morning flight, so when my it started wiggling and chirruping on my bedside table I opened my eyes wondering fuzzily where exactly I was supposed to be going, and why. I do sometimes wake up wondering where in the world I am. Occasionally I even wake up having forgotten where I’m headed off to that day. But I rarely wake up with no memory at all of needing to go somewhere.

When I picked up the phone a Task list was displayed and there was only one item on it. That item was Lisa’s wedding (Australia 07/07/07). 

This did not immediately clarify things for me. If the phone alarm was going off, I reasoned, I was supposed to be going somewhere. According to my To Do list, however, that somewhere was Australia. For my own wedding.

I am usually good at going with the flow. A couple of months ago I packed and headed to the airport to spend two weeks in Africa with just two hours notice. (This may or may not have been because I repeatedly misread my itinerary in the preceding weeks and only realized my mistake two hours before I needed to leave; that is beside the point). Going with the flow, however, was proving challenging when I was having a hard time recollecting planning a wedding in Australia, or who I might conceivably be marrying.  

And then I remembered.

I was with Pasadena friends in a movie theatre in 2005. I can’t remember how the topic came up, but someone was talking weddings and bemoaning the twin hassles of setting a date and finding a venue, and I constructively suggested that a lot of time and angst could be saved if you settled those details before you were even in a relationship. So, in response to Robin’s challenge, I named a place (Australia, of course) and the perfect international date that no guest, no matter where they were from, could possibly get wrong – the 7th of July in 2007.

Laughing, Robin and Jenn commandeered my phone and programmed this in for me, complete with an alarm reminder for me to get engaged three months before the actual day.

“No worries,” I had said, “three months will be plenty of time to plan a wedding.”

I groaned and silenced the alarm. What on earth had possessed them to think that I’d want to start planning said wedding at 7:00 on a Friday morning, I’m not sure.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve been ambushed regarding this matter at an early hour this year, or even this week.

On a cold, rainy, Christmas morning in Washington DC my sister Michelle was nominated to be the present elf, and I was the lucky first recipient. I was so excited by my good fortune that I failed to take due notice of the grin on Michelle’s face - a grin I should have recognized. It was the grin she gave me one sunny midnight in Norway, years ago now, as she threw down her cards and declared victory after a particularly intense game of Mafia. She had steadfastly lied to me for 45 minutes, steering her team to victory while I sabotaged mine by repeatedly insisting that she was not capable of such flawless and blatant deceit, not while looking me straight in the eyes. It was Michelle’s hybrid grin – one part naughty, one part proud – but even if I’d recognized it as such I’m pretty sure that I still wouldn’t have been able to figure out what my younger, married, pregnant, sister had wrapped so gaily for me.

The complete book of international adoption: A step by step guide to finding your child.

A second of stunned silence was closely followed by laughter all round the family circle, but I’m beginning to worry that Michelle’s Christmas present has set the theme for the entire year because I was equally blindsided by the solitary present I had to open on the morning of my thirty-first birthday, last Sunday.

My birthday started early. Sadly, this was not because of anticipatory excitement related to piñatas, stacks of presents, or trick candles adorning strawberry cheesecake, but because I had to drive a friend to the airport at 5am.

I had fully intended to come back from the airport and get straight to work on the book. The final copy-editing deadlines are looming, and I’ve spent the last month trying to figure out how other people manage to juggle working full time, writing, and having a life. Perhaps they all work early on Sunday mornings, but if that’s the case I don’t think I’m destined to be a successful tripartite multi-tasker because when I looked between my desk and my pillow at 6:30 on the morning of my birthday, it wasn’t even a close call. Instead, I ripped open the padded yellow envelope I’d saved for this moment as I climbed back into bed.

Inside that envelope was another book, posted over from England by one of my best friends. And the title of this book was Spinsters Abroad: Victorian Lady Explorers. On the cover is a small brunette wearing a white dress buttoned to her chin, and a pith helmet. She is shading this unlikely ensemble with a parasol and stepping daintily through the jungle.

This manifesto on international singleness was still lying on my bedside table five days later when my phone woke me with its shrill commands to get engaged, and while I wasn’t all that amused at 7am, by dinner that night I’d regained my sense of humor.

“I want to write an essay about it,” I explained to my flatmate, Duffy. “But I don’t want people to wonder whether I’m just putting a brave face on acute psychic pain.”

“They won’t. They’ll just think you’re being a drama queen, as usual,” he reassured me. “But while we’re on the topic, are you putting a brave face on acute psychic pain?”

So, let’s tackle this head on. Sure, being single at 31 is not exactly how I imagined my life playing out. When I was 16 I had it all sorted. I’d leave it daringly late and marry at 24. I’d have my first baby at 27. And I would somehow manage to do this while being a trauma surgeon and living in Africa. According to that plan, I’m both behind schedule and off-track.

But there’s been both good and bad to my teenaged plans being turned on their head. I’m convinced that staying single throughout my twenties handed me opportunities and experiences I would have had to forego if I’d been married. I would not have been able to take off on twelve days notice to move to Croatia, accept a scholarship to Notre Dame because it sounded like fun, or relocate to California simply on my sense that it was the right decision to take up a job that keeps me on the road at least one week out of four. I may never have finished writing my first novel, using weekend days when I was beholden to no one but myself. I would not have had near as much time to invest in a wide, rich, friendship network that encircles the globe. 

Of course, I sometimes wonder whether I’m going to miss out altogether on those beauties and struggles peculiar to parenthood, or on learning how to be genuinely vulnerable in a way I suspect that only the bond of marriage allows. Those are the days when I wake up and wonder whether I wouldn’t perhaps feel happier, more fulfilled, or less restless on a radically different path. When I would like to come home to someone who’s vowed to be interested in how my day was. When I just want someone to bring me coffee in bed, or rub my shoulders uninvited.

Last night I rang a girlfriend from university who I was a bridesmaid for ten years ago when we were both 21. She’s now living on a verdant pecan farm in Australia, complete with a prince of a husband, two young girls, a dog, two cats, a horse, and a veggie garden.

“You know I want your life sometimes,” I confessed near the end of our conversation.

She laughed.

“My brain is turning to mush with no one but the kids to talk to all day and when you say that you spent… (then aside) Eloise, I told you to stay at the table while you finished your milk. Sit back down please…. that you spent last week in Boston at a conference, I want your life.”

So, yes. I have my odd day of acute psychic pain, but they’re only rarely related to the fact that I’m still a spinster abroad. They’re far more often related to tsunamis or human cruelty, to death and grief, or just thoughtless words and hormones.

In relation to children, I’ve got time – and when I run out of that I now also have the complete book of international adoption. As for my July wedding in Australia…

Well, there’s always 08/08.

© Lisa McKay 2007 - All rights reserved