Mauve Momma #3

This post is kind of cheesy, but as I went over it to edit it, I decided it is what it is, and it's mine. So enjoy.

"Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died."

I read Charlotte's Web for the first time when I was five or six. I read it over again many times in later years. And a couple times, I visited my mother's third-grade classroom while they were reading the book together. I was by turns amused and touched to see her, in three or four consecutive years, get teary while reading the end of the above chapter to her rugrats.

I mean, it IS really sad. Even if it's a kids' book, and Charlotte isn't real, and spiders don't talk and have personal relationships and spin SOME PIG into their webs, we relate to Charlotte's selflessness and love, and we don't want to see her go like that, alone. The fact that Wilbur loved her and raised her babies helps, but it doesn't erase her mostly solitary life and end.

Let me explain how this all relates. Being a carrier of my family name is a source of some pride for me; included in the package is an rich, 200-year history in the American Southwest, a Supreme Court case boasting our name, and stunningly good-looking genes. What it doesn't always include is the ability to make personal relationships stick for life. My grandfather is on his third wife at 87; his first wife, my grandmother, died in 1954 of a cerebral hemorrhage, and his second wife, the woman I call Grandma, divorced him in the 70s after six children and a lot of angry times. Some of my aunts and uncles have solid marriages, but my parents aren't among them- they never got married. My father had one short lived marriage before my birth, lived with my mother for less than a year total, and eventually found another marriage that produced my brother and sister before ending in divorce after about seven years.

And of course, my mother. My mother has had several serious relationships in her life, including a live-in boyfriend I called my stepfather, but never one that involved a wedding. In a sense, I admire that, because she knew none of them were the One, and she never had to be disillusioned by divorce. But I don't want that. I don't want to raise a child alone, even a kickass daughter like myself. I don't want to initial a sheaf of divorce papers. I want to be crazy old people in love; I want a 50th anniversary party and a closet full of photo albums long after such things become quaint and outdated.

I have career goals, spiritual goals, physical goals, all kind of plans. And one part of that is to have a companion forever. My grandfather, my father, and my mother couldn't make that all work. I still love and admire them. But when it's my time to go, I want the love of my life- the one who's been there all along- to be there.

And I hope there aren't any race horses or Ferris wheels there, because that would be weird. Yeah.