The Thing About Timing

Asabi didn't want to say she regretted coming home during her seven-day work leave, but the conversation she was currently having with her mother was making it hard to dismiss that sentiment.

“You're getting older,” her mother emphasized.

Asabi looked up from her laptop. She had known it was coming. It always came eventually. 

“You're thirty-one,” her mother continued. “What exactly are you waiting for?”

She closed the laptop. “I'm not waiting for anything.”

“You are. You just don't want to admit it.”

"Mummy.”

“I am serious. You have a good job. You're educated. You're beautiful. What else are you looking for?”

A better job, she thought. Maybe a car. A completed PhD. Savings that wouldn't disappear whenever something unexpected happened. A life that didn't feel like it was held together by careful budgeting and crossed fingers.

Instead, she said, “I'm trying to put my life together.”

Her mother frowned. “Your life is already together.”

“No, it isn't.”

“You have a job.”

“A stable job. Not necessarily the job I want.”

“You have a house.”

“I rent.”

Her mother waved dismissively. “You have everything you need to get married.”

Asabi stared at her. “That isn't the same thing.”

Her mother sighed. “When I was your age, I was already married. And I don't regret it.”

“I didn't say you should.”

“I married your father young. And because I did, I got to enjoy him for many years before he died.”

Her father's death was still a sensitive topic for Asabi. Her mum knew that, yet she brought it up.

Her mother continued more softly. “I had children. I had a family. I had someone to come home to. I don't want you to wait until you wake up one day and realize you've wasted the best years of your life.”

She understood what her mother was trying to say, but that didn't make it easier to hear. “You got married young because that was what you wanted.”

Her mother didn't answer.

“I don't want the same things at the same time.”

Her mother looked away.

“I want to buy my own car. I want to finish my PhD. I want to get a better job. I want enough money that an emergency doesn't scare me. I want to know that if I get married, I'm doing it because I'm ready to build a life with someone and not because I'm afraid of getting old.”

Her mother's expression softened, but only slightly. “And what if you meet someone now?”

“Then I'll decide what to do.”

“And what if you don't?”

“Then I don't.”

Her mother shook her head. “You women think you have forever.”

“I just don't think marriage is a deadline.”

For years she'd tried to make her mother understand that she wasn't running away from marriage. She was just trying to build a life she wouldn't feel the need to escape from.