The family came round today. All of them. It always looks like a biscuit bomb has gone off in a toy factory: train track twisting round the sofas, bits of lego and Jenga blocks scattered across the carpet, crumbs of cake, half-eaten jammy dodgers, broken custard creams, an upturned plate and empty juice cups.
Sam (5) was connecting together bits of Duplo to make a gun, no doubt with me as its first target, as soon as the plastic bathtub was connected to the lamp bit.
"How old are you Uncle Matthew?" he asked, sweetly.
"I'm 4," I said, smiling. He laughed.
"It must be a bigger number than that!"
I inwardly agreed - it absolutely must be 'a bigger number than that', though sometimes I'm not sure it's really the size it is.
"36," I said, eventually.
His eyes widened as though he couldn't imagine it. What must it be like to be that old! That's the thing though, isn't it? He can't imagine it, and I don't think anyone would expect him to. His world is chocolate biscuits and school jumpers, lego and CBeebies - mine is a minefield so complicated and dangerous, it may as well be another planet to his little wide eyes.
"Are you married to someone?" he asked.
"No, I'm not," I replied.
"Why not?"
"Well, I... don't actually know," I said, racking my brain for a way to explain it that would have made sense to him. It would have been so easy to have slipped into cliché-gear and dragged out the old stock response: 'I just haven't met the right person yet', but I was acutely aware that while it sounds like a neat little suitable summary of a very painful journey, that actually isn't exactly how I think of it these days, and I didn't want to be dishonest to my nephew.
It's fascinating to me how even in the simple world of a five year old boy, the idea that you should be married by a certain age has already been cemented as a kind of central principle of life. If you follow this dreadful principle through logically, it leads to the inevitable and unbearable pressure on young people to make a huge decision, sometimes at the silliest time in their lives, not to mention the world it helps to create - where single people are treated as losers and outcasts but only behind twitching curtains and closed doors.
There is another member of my family who believes I'm not in a relationship because their own inability to hold it together has somehow 'put me off' the idea altogether. I don't really understand this argument. It's sort of saying, "Well, look if I can't manage it, Matt, if it's too difficult for me... pfft! you got no chance, buddy." which is offensive tosh for lots of reasons that I don't need to explain.
My sister butted in and answered Sam's question for me while I was thinking about it.
"He just hasn't met the right lady," she said. I slumped a bit in the sofa. "But one day," she continued, "we'll all dress up posh and go to Uncle Matthew's wedding."
I wonder how old Sam will be by then?
No comments:
Post a Comment