Women

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Upon my graduation from high school, like most “adults” I decided to move out of my parents house. My parents, desiring to keep me close, offered for me to live in my grandparents old house. I accepted because I wanted room for my shoes and the ability to decorate.

My taste is very feminine. It always has been. And so when I decorated my new abode, I redecorated what I could on my limited budget. In the process of finding furnishings and other necessities, I happened upon two boxes of dishes edged in pink and stenciled with roses. They seemed perfect for me.

As I began to use them, I realized that they were both too girly for a man to like and also very fragile. They were on clearance for a reason. But as my twenty-four plates dwindled slowly in number, I vowed that they would last until my wedding. I watched as fragile, poorly made plate broke like the petals falling off the beast's rose, waiting for someone to live him. If the rose lost all of its petals before he found it, then he would be forced to stay that way forever. I hope that isn't true about my rose plates.

Now I hover on the edge of turning twenty-seven, I still sit in my house where only one plate remains. The decor has changed over the last eight years. The house is now fully furnished in carefully selected pieces that I love instead of an eclectic mix of garage sale cast-offs and my grandparents hand-me downs. I'm preparing to finish up the transformation with a coat of paint and a new floor in the kitchen. And more than that, I hope to tile the porch and patio. It is all very exciting, and I am happy. I'm not sitting waiting for my life to begin. I am living. And yet still the awaited wedding in not in sight.

I have considered hiding that last plate to protect it, so that I may take that place and shatter it on my wedding day in amusement to my groom. But no instead, I will keep using, keep living life, because life doesn't stop just because it hasn't turned out quite the way that I imagined. I'll just keep on living my life and then one day that plate is going to break, and I'm going to know that my time is just around the corner. The plate, the final plate, isn't the end. It is only the beginning.

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