Well, I hope you haven’t forgotten about me! Work and life have been busy. I joined the barn chore team at the stable where I take my horseback riding lessons. Let me tell you, scooping horse poop and petting sweet foals is so much fun. My muscles did feel every move of pushing a wheelbarrow filled with manure up a hill.
And the stallions get quite randy when a new mare is brought on site.
I am still single, though, and still have ideas to write about the single life. Thanks for sticking with me.
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When you put your writing out into the world in a blog like this, you never know who’s reading, really. Last week, I was out of the city on an assignment for my job with the Halifax Examiner and one of the people I was interviewing mentioned she reads this Substack. I was very pleased to hear that!
This woman, who is married, said she told her one of her close friends about the blog. That friend is a longtime happy singleton.
Then she went on to tell me about her spry 89-year-old mother who is now widowed. She said she asked her mother if she is “going to take a lover” — I love that line — but the mother said she is finally getting to enjoy time on her own. Her mother, this woman told me, had grown up in an era during which getting married was just expected. She was now relishing her independence.
Being single or married isn’t really set in stone. Your status exists on the spectrum. Some single people may not be single forever and some married people may find themselves single again because of separation, divorce, or death.
My goal with this Substack is to help people feel better about their single status in a world that sets expectations for marriage and certainly makes millions in industries designed to match you up with someone. Heck, as my photo above shows, the grocery stores are even trying to match the single bananas with someone! I know there are plenty of publications and blogs dedicated to NOT being single.
Anyway, on the road trip home after that all-day interview last week, I was listening to Mainstreet on CBC. On the show, CBC intern Jenna Banfield interviewed Nova Scotian author Lesley Crewe, who has a new novel out called Death & Other Inconveniences. That novel follows the life of Margo, who is finding her own independence after the death of her husband (You can read more about Crewe and her books here).
Crewe told Banfield that the novel was inspired by one of her own personal stories. Crewe said she’s “technically illiterate” and doesn’t know how to work the remote for her television. One night, she was trying to work the remote, when her husband, who was having surgery the next day, said “You know Les, if something happens to me, you’re never going to watch TV again.”
“That got me thinking about what other inconveniences would happen if your partner died, the one who knows how to work the remote. The one who knows how to figure out the computer. The one who knows how to start the generator and work the snowblower,” Crewe said.
“And because I’m of a certain age and I have friends whose husbands have died, I thought, ‘okay, it can’t just be me. I live in the middle of nowhere, so what am I going to do if something happens.”
These, of course, are legitimate concerns. I have them, too. Even as adults, we’re always learning how to do new things, but some of those things require certain expertise. In my case, I have great mechanics to fix my car, although they said I should know how to put on a spare tire. I do know how to put air in a tire and just had to do that two weeks ago when I found myself with a flat. Everyone should own an air compressor, by the way!
I have an accountant who does my taxes, after doing them myself for years.
And last night, my daughter’s boyfriend mowed our lawn. Not that I can’t do it, but I often just forget. I also kind of like dandelions. (By the way, my daughter said, “It’s nice having a boyfriend; you should get one, too.)
In her interview on Mainstreet, Crewe said that “no one matures at the age of 18” and we’re always learning, even into our senior years.
“Sometimes it’s when you’re 75,” Crewe said. “It depends on how you’ve coped all your life with things you’ve had to go through and sometimes it takes something like this [death of a partner] to finally make you realize, ‘I’m responsible for myself’ and that comes to people at all different ages.”
This is so true. I like hearing stories about people who have learned what they’re capable of when they’ve doubted themselves. Whether you’re an 89-year-old widow who doesn’t want to take a lover or like Margo in Crewe’s latest book, you’re responsible for yourself and have to figure it out at any age.
As Gloria Gaynor sang in 1978, “I Will Survive.”
As always, thanks for reading!
Suzanne
Single survivor, most of the time