All Twelve of Mary's Sisters Are Married

We don’t want her to feel bad

But the facts are the facts

And the facts are

That all twelve of Mary’s sisters are married

And Mary is not

Now, when you have thirteen daughters

You certainly can't expect all thirteen of them

To wind up married

It is 1934 after all

These are modern times

You expect that one of them will be a nun

Or an eccentric, like Mildred who lives down the street

And wears pants even when she’s not gardening

You assume that one of them will shun the idea of being married

And when that happens

You’ll do what any parent would do

And never speak to her again

But when twelve of your girls

End up happily married

To wonderful young men

And Mary, your third prettiest daughter

Is still alone, well—

It does make you wonder

For awhile there, we assumed that Crippled Natalie

Would be keeping Mary company

At the Single Girls Table

But now that she’s tied the knot

It’s just Mary

Hmm?

Oh—Yes, well, we have to call her that

Because, you see, we have another daughter named Natalie

John and I just LOVE the name Natalie

And when Old Natalie became ill

We thought, Well, we’d better name this new daughter Natalie

So we’ll still have a Natalie

But then Old Natalie recovered

And new Natalie injured her leg

In that unfortunate tomato cart accident

So it just made sense to call New Natalie

Crippled Natalie

So we wouldn’t get confused

We told Mary if she didn’t get engaged soon

We’d have to start calling her Unmarried Mary

And she laughed and laughed

As though we were joking

But we were not joking

You see, we have two other Mary’s

Mary with the Weird Eye

And Mary Who Smells of Chicken

And so we need to call the last Mary something

And for awhile we called her Probably Going to Get Married Mary

Because we assumed she was probably going to get married

And we also assumed that Weird Eye Mary and Chicken Mary

Were NOT going to get married

But, yet again, we were proven wrong

We kept trying to give Unmarried Mary to the men

Who wanted to marry our other daughters

Since it didn’t seem right that girls with deformed legs

And weird eyes

Should get married before other girls

Who have nothing wrong with them

Aside from stringy hair

And overactive sweat glands

But the men insisted on the women they fell in love with

And so Mary was left out in the cold

Along with our daughter Sophia

Who, for some reason, enjoys eating snow

After people have stepped in it

John and I certainly have an interesting group of children

I guess that’s what happens when you marry your own uncle

Mother always said how nice it was to go to a wedding

Where people could sit wherever they wanted

Because everybody was on the same side

Sophia the Snow Eater married the ice man

Which, I suppose, we should have seen coming

But I do wish we could find someone for sad little Mary

If not, she’ll just live at home with John and me

And care for us in our old age

She’ll just have to wear clothing made of stronger fabric

Since all that sweating makes the poor creature

Look like she’s always coming in

From out of the rain

I’m still holding out hope that she’ll meet someone

But as time marches on, my hope dwindles

And as I always say to Unmarried Mary

‘It’s not that your father and I love you any less

Because you’re not married

We just love the other girls a little bit more’

Then she storms out of the room

And into the cupboard

Where we let her sleep

It was the only room left

By the time she was born

And she’s used to it now

Oh dear, oh dear

Parenting well can be so tricky