The Show
by Michelle Haimoff
I'm on the bus. Some guy is talking into his cell phone. His wife is doing well. She's back at work. They got a nanny for the baby and now the baby's sleeping better.
I haven't even met my husband yet.
So I have to meet some guy and date him and cover all the basics that have been covered so many times before, and introduce him to my family and stand next to him at family events while everyone pictures us having sex.
We'll get engaged. I'll care about what ring I get.
We'll plan our wedding. Go through photographs. Make an album. Find the perfect end table. Have a baby. Buy baby clothes. Document its every move.
My husband will tell some guy on his cell phone that the baby's sleeping better and that I'm back at work.
We'll have another baby, obsess over where to put the kids in school. Plan birthday parties. Help with school projects. Hope they do well on their SAT's. Fret about where they're going to college. See them on holidays. Meet their boyfriends and girlfriends and picture them having sex. Help plan their weddings. I'll buy a slimming dress. Talk about nothing but babies for months at a time. Get old. Gain weight. Wrinkle. Fight wrinkles. Accumulate photographs and hotel shampoo and pens that are out of ink. Have dusty stuff. Try not to wake up too early. Brag about my grandkids to other old people. Feel pain in every part of my body. Worry about everything. Care about nothing. Die.
There are only so many conversations a person can have. I'm already sick of it and I haven't even started yet. I wish there was some way around it. I'm sure there are a thousand ways, but I'm never gonna join the Peace Corps or move to Tuscany or Mexico or a farm.
I'm going to do exactly what everyone else does and I'll get just as excited about every little thing as everyone else is. It will be like I was the first person in humankind to have a baby and that child was the first person ever to apply to college. It will be imperative that I look good at my wedding, and their weddings, and in family pictures.
I will laugh. I will cry. I will be just as involved as any person on this bus. I will be like those audience members that get really into a show as though they have no concept that it is just a show.
And the worst part is that this is the only moment of clarity I'll ever have. By tomorrow it will be gone. It will be Thursday and I'll be just as absorbed as anybody else.
Michelle Haimoff is a native New Yorker living and writing in Greenwich Village. She has written for Profile Magazine, L Magazine, Portfolio and Eyewitness Travel Guides. She is currently coordinating the editorial content for ThePanelist.com. Her first book, Secret New York is due to be published by Interlink Books in the Spring of 2007.