Feminary

Sept. 30, 2017

Many women of my acquaintance, it seems, share a common fantasy. While this tends to be the pipe dream of the demographic gracefully called by the French “a woman of a certain age” (which is so much nicer than saying “middle aged and heading for the barn”), I note that it is not exclusive to females in their 50s – so be warned, gentlemen!

If you propose a “feminary,” you’ll get involuntary toe-wiggling in bliss.

“I just want to live,” I say, “in a small cabin in a pretty place.”

“Hm,” they say, thinking “What – away from Starbucks?”

“On a hillside dotted with cottages, where my friends live,”

(Yes, they think – that’s better.)

“And there’s a common dining hall and a fire pit for sing-along hootenannies.”

(I love a hootenanny. Who doesn’t?)

“And the women who just love to cook do the cooking.”

(I don’t have to cook?/I could spend my days cooking?)

“And everyone contributes something, but mostly you have your own little place and all the friends you want but only when you want them.”

(There’s where the toe-wiggling begins. Oooh.)

My dinner companion last night, also une jolie dame d’un certain age, embroidered (as we are wont to do). “And young, partially-clothed men would sometimes come to mow the lawn.”

More toe wiggling.

We don’t want to bed the lawn-mowing men or even talk to them; let them go on their way to their trucks and their dirty dishes and what must certainly be a bedroom ankle-deep in discarded socks since The Little Missus gave up and came to live at the feminary. We just want some nice art to look at before turning with a happy sigh back to our gardening or baking or writing or other form of fulfilling, satisfying artistry.

Don’t quibble with me about mortgage payments or oil filters or car inspections; we’re all entirely capable and we’ll figure it out. And it’s not that we don’t like the male of the species. There just comes a day when we realize it would be toe-wriggling to live in a little cabin on a hillside, stone alone. Except for the friends scattered about nearby.

You in?