buy the time …

It’s 2008; just weeks before my 27th birthday, my cousin and I sat down to plan our double-birthday March madness bash.  With only five days separating our birthdays, March becomes an all out assault on being single and getting older in a city that makes it possible for you to never grow up.  Anywhere else on earth the likes of a 34 year old single person who never married and never had a kid would be deemed broken, in New York they are revered as Gods – untouchables.  In fact there is a growing number of twenty-year-old women chasing down the elusive “untouchables” to change their unsettling ways.  George Clooney has made this chase an art.
 
My cousin and I thought we were going to be “untouchables” – never wanting to settle down.  Our sign, Pisces – difficult fish to catch.  We sat there at an Upper West Side dinner planning on inviting everyone we know to the swanky second floor midtown bar for our celebration.  The drinkathon would be the Thursday night on the eve of my actual birthday.  I told her how my  mother concerned said, “I was married by your age.”  That’s when we came up with FBA.  FBA is a bet and stands for First B*tch to the Aisle (FBTTA didn’t sound as cool).  The rules – who ever walks down the aisle first is the loser.   If you got married first you were deemed Dead Bitch Walkin’.  The loser was at the mercy of what the winner wanted them to do.  My cousin new immediately what my punishment would be – a tattoo.  I hate needles.   She loves tattoos.  I had to think about mine for a bit, but it takes awhile for coal to become diamonds.  If my cousin loss she would have to name her first-born child after me – Marisa could be a boys name.  After hearing this, my cousin upped the ante, the tattoo had to now have her name or initials in it.  She didn’t stop there – if one of us got pregnant before marriage we had to get a tattoo with the other person’s name and name the child after the winner.  This scenario was never going to happen.
 
Now about nine months ago on the 4th of July, I helped my cousin pack to move into her new apartment.  We were both nowhere near an aisle, but close like sisters.  We hadn’t seen each other in a couple of weeks, something that rarely happened since we moved here together almost eight years ago.   I asked the same question we had asked each other a million times, “What’s up with you?”  Her response a bit unusual, “Do you really want to know?”  Jokingly I responded, “Let me guess I won the bet, your pregnant.”   Calmly, with a subtle excitement in her voice, “Hope you’re ready to be an auntie.”  I was excited, scared, jubilant, more scared and relieved that I didn’t have to get a tattoo.  Little Marisa was on her way!  Ever so ready, she looked at me, “I wanted to have kids by the time I was 30.”  It hit me like a ton of rocks, I always thought we shared similar paths and all this time we veered in different directions – from thinking kids were just fun to look at from a safe distance, behind the glass of contraceptives.  
 
It didn’t really hit me until a few weeks after, it was a Saturday night and my boyfriend was out of town.  It was time for a real girls night. I was already out and dressed for some good ol’ bar hoping debauchery.  I looked at my phone to find all my girls were now doing stuff with their husbands or fiancés.  I called the dwindled number of single friends, called the two and neither picked up their phone.  But there was always my partner in crime, my cousin.  I went to dial and realized my drinking buddy was now creating baby buddies.  My New York was changing; nothing was untouchable.  
 
The nine months flew and there we were, two ladies of Manhattan, sisters created from the beating that this city throws at you, standing amidst the lighting fixtures at Home Depot.  My cousin’s boyfriend was off with her parents looking for a drill while I stood there pushing the cart as she waddled beside me carrying 40 weeks of life inside of her.  “Come out already, your auntie wants to play,” I sad as people eyes darted around us trying to figure out if we were a couple or sisters.  “I’m ready,” she says with little care that people are looking.  “Eight years ago when we moved to New York, did you ever think we would be walking through Home Depot while you were ready to pop.”  My cousin is special, beautiful while being bloated, without looking at me responds, “Yes.”  Her baby might not have been planned, but it’s what she had in plan.  
 
She is getting the tattoo, she won’t tell me how my name is involved.  Her boyfriend has vetoed a son named Marisa.  The bet was still won by me, but my cousin really has the prize.  
 
Now if the baby would only come out!