CHAPTER ONE: The Spinster Nightmare It wasn't the bogeyman, monsters under the bed, or even getting a shot at the doctor's office that terrified me most as a child. My biggest fear was that I might grow up to be like my poor aunt Agnes, the one who never married and who never had children.
Aunt Agnes was living proof that there are no guarantees in life and that was what frightened me so. It seemed that all little girls were expected to grow up, get married, and have families; so, to my six-year-old way of thinking, Aunt Agnes was a deviation from all that was normal. She was the only woman I knew who never had a husband or a baby, and that seemed to separate her from all the so-called "normal" people in the world.
No one ever spoke openly about her life circumstances, and I learned at an early age that questions regarding the matter were strictly off-limits. The world seemed to pity Agnes, and there was always an air of tragedy and emptiness about her. From a very young age, I was certain I didn't want my life to turn out like hers.
I was positive -- because everyone had told me so -- that I was going to grow up to marry a wonderful man and have lots of babies with him. Marriage and motherhood were presented to me as the ultimate goal, and I spent many joyful childhood hours preparing for those roles. My best friend and I "played house," vowed to be bridesmaids at each other's weddings, and dreamed of our wedding day as we pushed our toy baby strollers around the block.
Yet, even in the midst of such blissful daydreaming, I do remember some disturbing doubts creeping in about just how joyous a life that might actually be.
Take "Betsy Wetsy," for instance. She was a very popular baby doll when I was growing up in the 1950s. She came complete with a plastic baby bottle that could be filled with water, a hole in her mouth that fit perfectly over the nipple, and a cloth diaper that became wet a moment after she was "fed." While other little girls marveled at this doll's lifelike qualities, it occurred to me what a chore she really was. Being one of seven children myself, I had already fed and diapered my share of real babies. At the tender age of eight, I was beginning to ask questions more appropriate of twenty. What was so fun about this? Why did I need another hungry mouth to feed or another dirty diaper to change? What I found most disturbing of all was that no one seemed to have much of an answer for me, other than this was supposed to be a young girl's idea of entertainment.
Though I wanted to believe that life would be perfect once I found a husband and had a baby, the circumstances that I saw around me didn't always validate that belief. There were times when I delighted in cuddling and playing with my infant siblings, but there were also times when motherhood looked suspiciously like a never-ending chain of chores. Nagging doubts began creeping in, and I began feeling torn between the desire to be a mother and the wish to have a life that included adventure, freedom, and independence. I even wondered if God had made a mistake when he made me and had really intended me to be a boy. Quite honestly, building tree forts looked like a lot more fun than changing Betsy Wetsy's soaked diapers, but, of course, statements like that were frowned upon.
My biggest concern was that if I didn't hold tight to the motherhood dream, I would be cast into a world that would probably eat me alive. Who would protect me? Who would love or care about me? What possible purpose could I serve? Even more frightening, Who would show me the way if my way wasn't motherhood? What else were girls supposed to do? I had no idea. I knew there were women who never married or had children, but it seemed the best they could hope for was mere survival. You never heard of them flourishing or being ecstatically happy. No, spinsterhood was too scary a prospect. Forcing myself to fit in seemed like the only logical answer.
In the end then, I decided to swallow my nagging doubts. After all, my options appeared quite limited. During the 1950s, even if a little girl had her eye on a career, the only ones open to her seemed to be nursing or teaching.
Since I was never very fond of school, I certainly didn't think I wanted to spend my adult life in a classroom, so I chose nursing as my profession. Besides, everyone told me it was only until I got married, right? I guess that somehow explained the notoriously low salaries of nurses and teachers.
I listened carefully to the messages that my Irish, Catholic, conservative world was giving me, and I did all the things I thought were expected of me. I finished high school, graduated college, and most important, kept my eye open for Mr. Right.
Only Mr. Right never showed up. Or maybe I just didn't notice him. By my late twenties, I decided ,that he must have been killed in Vietnam, since so many of my virile young peers had been sent there. For a time, I even thought that probably the federal government should send me some kind of monetary compensation for having killed my husband, even though I hadn't met him. How could I have if they had drafted him to some remote corner of the world, then asked him to die for his country?
Whatever the reason, Mr. Right hadn't shown up, and he was screwing up my plans. How was I supposed to get married and have all those children that were expected of me if he never showed his face?
In my early twenties, I had begun going to a lot of other people's weddings, and I remember overhearing relatives ask my parents, "Joan isn't married yet, is she?" As another decade marched by, I remember hearing the same question, only now it had a slightly more urgent tone to it, "Joan still isn't married, is she?" Later, when I reached forty and had not wed, the question sounded altogether different, "Joan never married, did she?" The first time I heard it put that way, I felt as if someone had kicked me in the stomach. In other words, it was far too late for a normal life.
Somewhat dejectedly, as my twenties rolled on, I watched my sisters, brothers, cousins, and friends marry and start their families, and all I could think was, What is wrong with me? Why can't I find someone to settle down with? To have a baby with? To make my life feel normal?
The relationships I was drawn to at that time in my life were not healthy ones. It seemed the only romantic alliances that attracted me were dramatic, turbulent, and often my affection went unrequited. As desperately as I thought I wanted the commitment of marriage and family, on some level I knew it would be unfair to subject, not myself only, but an innocent baby as well to the emotional roller coaster of the unstable and immature to which I was so consistently drawn.
Of course, there was always the option of just having a baby anyway, without the added complication of marriage, but I had to honestly ask myself at my motivation for this was. The answer was not pretty. Put simply, I was just plain lonely. And maybe a little bored as well. Neither was a good reason to have a baby, as far as I could see. In spite of having been socialized to believe that motherhood would fill me with an enormous sense of satisfaction and that raising children was the ultimate feminine fulfillment, I also began to wonder why, if this were so, were so many foster homes filled to overflowing? As usual, I found people evaded answering my question.
Whenever I mentioned it to others, I consistently received the same answer, "You'll feel empty and lonely later in life if you never have children." That didn't really scare me because I was feeling empty and lonely anyway. The next question that kept creeping into my mind was, Why are the people who are telling me this, all people who are married with children? How can they possibly know about something they have never experienced and why am I listening to them?