Three Times a Bridesmaid

I did the unthinkable, something that my mother had warned me about. "You're never going to get married now. You're doomed!" she hastily told me as soon as I confessed that I agreed to be in my best friend's upcoming wedding.

Doomed seemed like such a harsh word. I know my mother means well, but she forgets that sometimes her opinions are better left unsaid. It wasn't fair for her to try to take away the hope that someday I would find an almost-perfect man and get married. But, in one short phone call, she did. She believed I had done the unthinkable thing: agreed to be a bridesmaid again. It would be my third time as a bridesmaid, and everyone knows what that means-especially my mother.

"Three times a bridesmaid-never a bride," my mother pointed out, matter-of-factly.

"It's a cliché," I told her, frustrated at her negativity.

"A very worn-out cliché at that."

"No, it's not! Look at your Great-Aunt Edna," she said, quickly trying to come up with evidence to support this well-believed cliché to which she wildly clings.

Everyone knew that Great-Aunt Edna had been a bridesmaid three times. And she died, single and alone.

Well, not totally alone. She had eight cats.

"She was the richest person in our family. She lived like a queen," I retorted, remembering her expensive house and car. As a child, it seemed like a castle. And it probably would still seem that way. As we grow up, some things seem smaller. Even the world around us seems to shrink in size. But not Great-Aunt Edna's house; of that, I was convinced.