Friday, August 3, 2012

I've Seen You in a Movie

On a recent flight from London to Philadelphia, I sat next to a handsome, polite, extraordinarily charming 21 year old man from Nepal.  I rarely engage people whom I sit next to on airplanes, but he looked like he could use a "hello"  and I said something forgettable to him.  Really forgettable.  I have no idea how the conversation started other than I was the one to do it.  However, that was enough for Manjul to kill time chatting with another person on yet another leg of his journey from Katmandu to somewhere in the Middle East on Qatar Airlines, to London to Philly to somewhere in Ohio.

His English, even with his r that rolls on the aveolar palate, was perfect.  Not a surprise after I learned he was a TOFFEL instructor.  He was on his wayto Kenyon College to study physics.  The conversation bounced all around and he wished he could see a picture of me when I was young because he was sure I was beautiful then.  Eventually it became apparent to him that I am unmarried with two children.  "I have seen you in a movie."  I started laughing knowing exactly what he meant.  Single women are not ubiquitous in Nepal as they are here.  I was both suddenly exotic, and to be pitied at the same time.  But, I didn't care and he would soon learn that we are a dime a dozen in the US and would become very regular.  He laughed too knowing that he probably didn't say it quite the way he wanted to, but it sort of bonded us for the rest of the flight.  We kept talking until I fell asleep after a glass of wine and a tray of food with a salt content that could induce a stroke in a mastodon.

I've been told by a man schooled in Jungian psychology that I am the Hetaira archetype.  I see similarities and I like it, althought in many ways it is a lonely life.  But, I have aspects of the other Jungain archetypes.  One missing from Jung's pantheon of women is the "Single Mother" archetype.  I'd like to find the appropriate classical reference for this new archetype, like "hetaira".  I could only think of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, but she was consumed with putting him on the straight and narrow.  My children are scholars.  This is not me.  There's Boudicca, the warrior-princess Briton - me at a much earlier age.  Let's not start with the Virgin Mary; she had a savior, well, two had one through the process of giving birth and had one rescue her.

What I realize is that single motherhood is a new archetype both withing the US and without.  Within the US, many of us are leeches on the public dole, both a child of welfare and creating more miserable people that will drain government coffers.  We are women who struggle to make ends meet, fail to support her children emotionally as she can't cope with her own, and endsup with the wrong man, only to somehow pull together a heart wrenching reunion with her kids at Christmas. 

To others, we are an army of tired, miserable low-paid workers struggling to make their way through a world with too many demands.  I went on three dates with a Jordanian pediatrician who told me that he could always tell who the single mothers are because they often worked and therefore brought their children to the latest appointments in the day to avoid missing time from work. They always looked utterly exhausted to him. After he semi-stalked me I told him never to contact me again. Which, thankfully, he hasn't.

What is the Single Mother Archetype to Manjul?  Who are we?  How are we exotic.?  If at all?  I know he talked to me until I drifted off and then he slept after I awoke.  He has stayed in touch, knowing there is a friendly person in the US.  My son may take him to the Scottsdale Clubs someday.  Who knows.

But, I wonder if to the outside, I am exhausted and not the muse I have been.  Or, is it just that my body doesn't know what time zone it's in?

Stellargirll

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