My Family and Subtlety

I’m single. I.e. I haven’t got a wife, a girlfriend, a ‘significant other’ (yuck) or a ‘life partner’ (vomit). This is something I’m not ecstatic about but something I’m happy to say at the moment, trusting in the Lord’s goodness and provision of all I need, including singleness or marriage.

My family aren’t quite so keen about it. It’s not that it’s a failing, more something I could improve on by ‘bringing a nice girl home’. I was made particularly aware of their feelings this past weekend when I went home for my lovely niece’s christening. She is 3 months old and, completely objectively, the most beautiful baby on the planet. Fact. The weekend was fantastic – my Mum organised a great party with enough pork pie to solve the food crisis and amounts of quiche that could only imply a lot of tired chickens were having a well deserved rest.

So a lot of partying was had by all and the baby-focused frivolity naturally led on to people talking to me about my being single and childless. To understand the ‘chats’ I had, you have to understand that my family are not subtle. Well, to put it another way, they are subtle, but subtle in the same way that dynamite is subtle with cliffs, or in the way Manny Pacquiao would be subtle with his fist in my face.

So, below are the top three lines used by my family in their hunt (using that word deliberately) for my future wife, all of which were used in the past 3 days:

3. At three we have the small talk comment made over pre-party cupcake production. Whilst talking about the colourings used (pink and white for a girl, naturally), my mother looked longing at me and said ‘of course, one day we’ll need blue colouring for your baby boy’. I just said the colouring would run out of date before that happened. Either Mum knows something I don’t (!) OR she’s already bulk buying blue and pink food colourings for my future children. Maybe I’ll catch her out and adopt a slug. They’re hermaphrodite

2. In at two we have my mother AND my sister scouting out a wife amongst my sisters friends. ‘She’s a lovely girl [good], she’s a Christian [good, and praise God you understand that’s important for me – see http://politicstheologyandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/reationships.html as a sign of answered prayer] and you really should talk to her [ok]. Of course, if you married her you could move to Sheffield [WHOA THERE!!]’. I’m all for meeting nice girls, but perhaps advanced life-planning is a tad presumptive when I’ve yet to say hello to her! As if you even care, she was lovely but wasn’t my type.

1. However, miles in front of the others is my lovely grandmother. Her tactic is by far the most direct of the three. Wandering around the church flower festival (how English are we!) she proceeded to introduce me to her church friends as ‘this is Mark, my grandson. He’s still not got a woman yet you know’. Along with the image that formed in my mind of a caveman dragging ‘his woman’ back to his cave (we’re back to wife-hunting!) I was a bit caught out. I’m keen to find a girl, but I might draw a line at my grandma advertising my singleness to her old married church friends. Maybe I’m too picky.....

I absolutely love my family to bits and know they only want the best for me but I should probably advise that they change tactics on me. Now I’m sure this is an issue others have faced, so feel free to make comments and share stories

Debate (and funny stories) warmly encouraged