"I ain't never getting married."
John and I were sitting at our local barbecue joint (yes, joint is the appropriate term here) waiting for our order to be delivered to our table. I heard the employees talking behind the counter and the youngest of them, probably late teens to early twenties, was emphatic while stating her marital goals. I glanced over my shoulder and saw one of the slightly older girls laugh and shake her head.
"I said the same thing at your age and look at me now. Two kids and a dog later. Who's laughing now?" The oldest of them walked by with several plates of pulled pork and ribs in her hands and tossed the comment at them, "I am. Because I told you the same thing."
The young girl threw her pony tail over her shoulder and pursed her lips. "Nuh uh. No way. I had to clean up dog puke this morning. There's no way I am cleaning up after babies." They continued this banter for a few minutes and I ducked my head and smiled. I caught the eye of a man about my husband and my age at the table next to us at the time one of the girls made the comment about not really liking kids all that much.
I laughed and said, "That's usually other people's kids. Your own are a different story."
The guy in the Harley Davidson jacket with the helmet on the table beside him said, "Yeah. But wait until the grandkids come. That's a whole different story."
Yep. Even tough biker guys lose it when the grand babies show up, don't they? I told him I heard once that grandkids are God's reward to you for not shoving your teenager out of a moving car in a fit of insanity. He smiled and agreed.
In the last month we have celebrated two birthdays. Not our own, those aren't celebrated at this point, more like observed. But two of our grandkids who turned 18 and 16. The time has flown since we watched these two as toddlers. They were born to my daughter who turned 16 herself what felt like a couple of years ago. It's ridiculous, simply ridiculous.
I've had to start the sobering and annoying process of signing up for Medicare--which up until now I thought was for old people. And yet, here I am. In the last couple of weeks I've read where someone referred to people in their 60's as elderly. Elderly. Now come on. That's just mean.
I looked back over at the pony-tailed girl who was dumping ice into the Coke machine. I flashed back to my first job at a fast-food restaurant where I wore a pastel blue polyester uniform and a really ugly hat. I came home every night smelling like French fries, and minimum wage was in shockingly low single digits. I couldn't imagine having a long-term boyfriend, much less a husband and babies.
It's dangerously close to 50 years since that first job, and that underweight naive child. I've spent almost 45 years married to a wonderful man, raised three incredible human beings and am watching them raise 12 nearly perfect grandchildren for me.
I'd like to go find that girl and tell her: If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't change a thing. Oh, which girl? Both of them.
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