Marriage Woes

The title of this blog post is Marriage Woes -- Toby’s – not mine.  What 6 year old has MARRIAGE woes?  As it turns out, my serious little 6 year old does.  Driving him to school yesterday we were riding along in silence, listening to the radio when out of the blue Toby piped up with his confession,

“Well, Mommy, I’ve decided who I’m going to marry.” He said matter-of-factly.

“Oh?” I asked noting his determined crossed-arm stance in the back seat.

“I’m just gonna have to go with Sienna T.  She’s my second choice.”

That single statement contained a surprising amount of information in it.  It also begged a number of different questions.  I stammered a bit, not knowing where to start.

“OK…hmm…” I said.  “So who was your first choice?”

A quiet despondent voice answered in barely a whisper.

“Erin.”

After a pause came the qualification, “And SHE doesn’t want to marry ME.”

It was so ludicrously irrational yet simultaneously heartbreaking that I didn’t really know which angle to tackle it from.  I started in on a little speech on the importance of NOT settling but quickly changed gears to a more realistic take on the matter.

“Toby, you’re not even ALLOWED to get married for YEARS and YEARS.  By the time you actually WANT to get married you will probably have found someone you don’t even know yet.  Look at me and daddy-  we didn’t meet each other until later on in our 20s. “

His jaw hit the floor.  (He thinks I’m ancient.)

Besides, you change your mind all the time.  Right now your first choice is Erin but do you know that 2 years ago you wanted to marry Connor?

“WHAT!?!?!?!?!” came the shocked response from the back seat. “That’s CRAZY!!!”

Now I was the one who was heartbroken.  All of my hard work to raise my kid thinking same sex marriage was equal to the other kind and already a few years at school had beaten it out of him. Besides, we just love Connor and his family– it seemed like a good idea to me, too at the time :)

Toby said just what I thought he would say next, “Mommy, YUCK,  I do NOT want to marry Connor anymore.”

“But why?”  I pressed the used.

“BECAUSE.” He said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “if I married Connor we wouldn’t be able to have babies and I REALLY want to have babies.”

I was grateful that it was at least a practical opposition as I informed him that he could adopt a baby.  He thought about this for a bit before flooring me with the BIG one,

“Mommy…” he said pensively, “I just don’t get it.  How do two guys DO it when they get married?”

I had no one to blame but myself.  I was starting to sweat.  My mouth was dry.  My heart rate shot up to 200.  Was this it?  Was THIS the day we were going to have THE big talk?  Was I really going to have to explain sex AND homosexual sex all together in the same conversation when I had only 2 blocks to go before we got to school?

In a last ditch escape attempt I meekly clarified what exactly he meant by “do it”.

“You know, like, when they get married?  What do they do?  Does one of them wear a DRESS?  And how do they decide which has to wear the dress?”

OH THANK GOD.  I suddenly got where he was coming from - he was trying to picture him and joe BFF Connor duking it out at the alter over which one of them had to wear the dress...

“Suits!!! They both wear suits, Toby.”

We pulled into school and I regained enough composure to put my Mommy hat back on.  I told him that things would look very differently down the road.  And that you didn’t have control over who you fall in love with and as he gets older he may fall in love with a woman OR a man; he would just have to wait and see.  I reminded him that it’s a wonderful thing that happens  in whatever way it unfolds and that it can lead you to places you never even imagined….

“Like to where, Mommy?” He asked as I put the car in park.

“Like to you, Toby…”

 He didn’t get if, of course. But I did.  Everything that means anything has led me to him and Mia.  I left him at school that day feeling heartbroken for his Erin woes, but smugly satisfied that I had surpassed that awful stage in life where you constantly worry about who or IF you’re going to find someone.  If only I had had a crystal ball those times in high school and university when I worried so much that I wasn’t making the right choice, or I wasn’t going to find “Mr. Right”.  One glimpse at my earnest little boy in the backseat would have reminded me that life is good and the journey has meaning and that all will be right in the end….

Toby and Connor at the soccer carnival last year -- Dressed as (Saber toothed) Tigers, of course...