All The Single Ladies

The co-op where we live has a lot of older women whose husbands are long gone. I feel for their loss and always hope the best for them. It can’t be easy suddenly living on your own after so many years. I know that I would find it difficult having no one to blame for the dirty socks under the bed (although there would be none). And I empathize with these women having years ahead of them and no impatient old man to share it with. But it does make me wonder if something is going on that we don’t know about. To their credit, the women are very discreet about it, whatever it might be. But the men in their lives are disappearing at an alarming rate. According to my friend, A.I., it’s primarily due to a mix of biological factors and lifestyle choices. Could one of these choices be getting married to these women in the first place? I don’t want to mention murder here (although I just have and, yes, your honour, strike that from the record). Murder is impractical and messy, and these women are far from either. And I don’t think there’s a general plan of any kind. Although, when I see them all together down at the poolside, sitting in a circle, chatting and having such a nice time, I have to ask myself a few questions. Questions, of course, are always more interesting than the answers. And women, on the whole, are more interesting than men.

_{For fun, you might want to click image and check out my CBC web series with Jayne Eastwood.}

Men tend to live more concentrated lives, I suppose. They seldom stop to discuss shoes, for instance. I don’t mean to generalize, but I will. Men look at the world as something to conquer. Women look at other women and their nails. I have many female friends who are focussed on their work, and fiercely so, but they always seem to make time to talk about other things, because there are other things to talk about. Men die early because they don’t look at other men’s necklines or notice their roots. Gay men, being the gateway to the sexes, tend to be both concentrated and not at all. Gay men don’t pay much attention to shoes because their gaze tends to stop just below the waist, but they do pay attention to details on the way down. (I said I was generalizing but gay men always generalize).

The more I get to know the women in my co-op the more I like them, not for their kindness and consideration, not for their date squares and their book clubs, but for their information. The men in the building, what’s left of them, have no idea what’s going on. The women have the narrative and white wine, lots of it. I think men die, when they finally do, of disinterest. Women, at least the ones I know, are interested in just about everything; involved, even in passing. Life requires effort, yes, but also the absence of it; the ability to drop what you’re doing for a minute and talk seriously about accessories. If men were interested in jewellery, they might last a little longer. But most men I know seem only to be concerned with getting from A to B. You might say to yourself there’s nothing between A and B (especially if you’re a man) but talk to any woman in my co-op and they’ll tell you: the couple in 1204 are not getting along and the hibiscus is tipping over slightly and needs staking.

Although I am far from masculine, I tend to lean toward the masculine side when it comes to rushing through life to get to the end. I need to stop and remind myself that thin spaghetti straps have their place, but not on sagging shoulders. I need to see and hear what’s going on that isn’t just in front of me. Life is not a jungle to hack my way through. Well, yes, it is a jungle and yes, I need to hack my way through it. But now and again I ought to stop and notice some of the sights and sounds around me before I continue my quest. According to my friend A.I. I am statistically doomed to precede all the single ladies to the grave. But I’m not a statistic and I can be just as inquisitive as the next woman along the way. The unimportant things in life are sometimes the most important. And if not the most important certainly the most interesting.