DATING ADVICE FROM COUSIN MARIA

At 28, I was still unmarried, which was akin to cardinal sin in my Belizean family.

During another family cookout, my mother decided it was apropos to roast me in front of everyone, loudly proclaiming and complaining that, "After giving birth to five pickney, all me have is one grandchile."

Like grandchildren are items someone can pick up in the grocery store, I thought.

Glancing at me, she shook her head and walked away dismayed. I was her eldest child and by her standards, should have been wedded, bedded, and made a couple babies by now.

Feeling sorry for me, my cousin, Maria, sidled up next to me, gently taking one of my hands into her two clammy ones.

"Gyal," she began in her heavy Belizean dialect. "Whey di tek suh long?" she asked of my seemingly perennial singledom.

"I don know...I want to meet the person I’m supposed to be with and love forever. There's this one guy I kinda like, but..."

Cousin Maria interrupted me, sucking her teeth. "Love? Yuh di fool 'rung, gyal! Yuh mussee di wait fuh di perfeck mahn, but mekka tell yuh something: He nuh exist! Dat is di problem wid oonu young people today; oonu want nice nice all di time."

"Maria, you’re missing the point. I'm not asking for perfection, just someone who is compatible with me emotionally, mentally, spiritually, socially..."

She interjected. "Gyal! Dat is too much! Di mahn yuh like--he fat? He black? He bruk?"

"Well, he's kinda dark and thick..."

"Lookyah, none of it matters," Cousin Maria said, caressing my hand in comfort. The clamminess was irking me.
"When yuh get eena di bed and di lights off, he can be any mahn yuh want him fuh be. 'Membah dat," she said winking, then walked off.