Weddings and Babies

I found out last weekend (or at least it was confirmed last weekend; I've had suspicions for a while) that my cousin is pregnant. She lived next door to me all through childhood, and we're only nine months apart, so we were basically like sisters growing up. It's strange to think of her as a mother; in my mind, she's still the way she was in her first year or two of college, which was the last time I saw her on anything like a regular basis. She got married a few years ago and moved to Virginia, and I haven't seen her a whole lot since, even though she's now living in Columbus.

She's due at almost exactly the same time as my best friend from high school (whose baby I've known about since October). It's so odd that two of the most important people from my formative years are about to become parents. I have trouble imagining myself married, let alone completely responsible for another human being.

Speaking of marriage, my best friend from elementary school is getting married in two weeks. It's also hard to imagine her as a wife (I've seen her maybe half a dozen times in the past six years, and at least half of those were chance encounters in passing). And another cousin is getting married in May, about the time the two babies are due. I'm a bridesmaid in that wedding (though I think I was only added because they had an extra groomsman or something, because I was asked later than everyone else), and my pregnant cousin was supposed to be too, but as it turns out, she'll be giving birth at about that time....

So that's two weddings and two babies in the space of two months. How is it that all my friends and cousins are doing so many "adult" things and I'm still figuring out what the hell I want to do with my life? I'm starting to feel like a spinster at the age of 24. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be married, let alone a mother, at this point.

A Brand New Woman

I had lunch with my mom and my aunt who took care of my grandfather for at least the last 26 years (ever since my grandmother died). My aunt never married, and she's in her late 50s, I think. She's thinking about getting new bedroom furniture and moving into my grandfather's room. She's debating what kind of bed to get, and someone suggested that she just get a twin bed so she'll have more room in the bedroom for other things. But she rejected that and told the person, "Hey, maybe I'll get married." And now she's talking about traveling, and she goes out to lunch with friends several times a week - things she never did before because she hadn't been able to leave Grandpa alone too much for the past seven or eight years, at least. Suddenly she's a fifty-something bachelorette, and I'm not sure whether to be happy for her, sad that she never got to do these things before, or admire her because she gave up so much to take care of her father for all those years.