I'd Marry Him Again

Hubby and I thought hard about what to give each other for Valentine's Day. I wiped out the refrigerator and put away empty milk bottles (that have been sitting on the counter for weeks), and he came home early from work. True love people, true true love. 

a friend's facebook posting on February 14, 2013

This December my husband and I got to spend a long weekend in Las Vegas without our kids. We were at such a happy place in our relationship, and I was so excited to be getting on an airplane for a getaway with my man, that I had the urge to do some grand gesture to express my love for him. Like, something crazy. And what I kept thinking was, "We should go get married!" 

I listen to a lot of country music. And in country music, when you're madly in love, you run off to Vegas and get hitched.  (How did the whole getting-married-in-Vegas thing start? Because as it stands now, Las Vegas is definitely not geared toward helping people stay married. I mean, the strip clubs, ample ways to lose the family fortune, not to mention an ad campaign that endorsed adultery. But I digress.) 

I am a fan of grand and crazy gestures. At the risk of sounding like a De Beers diamond commercial, I'd like to show Jeff that I'd marry him all over again. But what I have discovered is that marriage is not really built for that. Or perhaps my marriage isn't, having married an architect, which means my spouse's mind is one part creative and one part engineer, but all parts definitely have their place, time, and prudent duration. 

When I expressed to Jeff my wild desire to get married in a Vegas chapel (I would have done it, truly!), the idea didn't exactly melt his butter (sorry, more country music influence there).  I made him drive me to the seedy side of Vegas to take a picture at a chapel for this blog, and that actually seemed quite lame to him. But he did it, God bless him. Here's proof: us at the Chapel of the Flowers; note the 7-11 sign right above the roof line. This was my husband's love gift to me: taking me to do something that he thought was kind of stupid. While smiling.

In our actual wedding 13 and a half years ago, not a spontaneous event but a traditional church affair that took nine months to plan, we picked Phillippians 2:1-4 for our pastor to speak on. I, at age 21, was focused on certain phrases in the passage:  being like-minded, being of the same love, being one in spirit, concepts which sounded both practical and romantic. 

My pastor, being actually married, focused on phrases in the same scripture like looking to the interests of others instead of just your own; he said this would be played out when the dishes were dirty and the baby was crying, we were both tired, and we both had to get up and go to work in the morning. 

He was right. These are the other love gifts in our marriage: I do the dishes, the grocery shopping; I cook food he likes; I book the baby sitter (or grandparent) for date night once a month. He takes out the trash; he pays the bills (after making the money) and balances the checkbook; he puts the kids to bed so I can go to a 7 p.m. Zumba class. 

This is how marriage works, not just for us, but for everyone. I reference my friend's  facebook post, above. She has five biological kids, and a foster child, last time I checked. I would imagine she and her husband show love to one another every day by working together to stem the chaos to which their lives could easily succumb. They are choosing -- and this is the key -- to see these small chores as the love tokens that they are.

And yet, it can't all be taking out the trash and cleaning the fridge. We need romantic gestures, too. I offered Jeff a back scratch on Valentine's Day evening and he looked so surprised and pleased that I was ashamed of myself. In his vows to me in our wedding he talked about how much he appreciated back rubs, and in my housewifely fatigue, I have sorely neglected him in favor of lying down flat on the couch and watching American Idol. He'd probably rather I left the dishes, conserved my energies, and gave him a neck rub. 

I want to love my spouse. Really love him. I want us to feel in love, and express it to each other. Perhaps this is why I listen to so much country music. No other musical genre devotes so much ink to marital love. Here's a piece of my current favorite country song by Lady Antebellum (download it on itunes. It's so good!). I dedicate it to my husband, who doesn't usually read my blog and would be embarrassed if he did. But I like romantic gestures, remember? And my man knew that going in. So this one's for you, baby, just a bit late for Valentine's Day. We're still meant to be.

I leave him sleeping as I rise early
Always up before the dawn
The house is dark, but I see clearly
Kettle sings a morning song
The bacon's frying, babies crying
I soak up the sights and sounds
Minutes turn to days and I wish that I could slow it down

If grease is the soul of the kitchen
And coffee the drink of the gods
Routine too perfect to mention
Time is a thief I would rob
We're meant to be, baby, hold onto me
I'll never not be your girl
'Cause love is the heart of the world

Oh, and hope is the soul of the dreamer
And heaven is the home of my God
It only takes one true believer
To believe you can still beat the odds

We're meant to be baby hold onto me
You'll never not be my girl (I'll never not be your girl)
'Cause love is the heart, love is the heart,
Love is the heart of the world

Marriage Part III: For the Sake of the Kids

I heard a woman speaking recently on the subject of documenting one's family legacy. She said something that stuck with me. After immigrating to the U.S. from Cuba with her family in the 1960s, their most striking impression of America was that we are a country that has lost touch with our stories. Not our history, our stories. In her native culture, they place a great value on knowing their family stories: the life events that shaped the lives and values of their parents and grandparents. In turn, it was through story that they imparted values to their children.

I notice with my children, the best way to teach them anything is to hide it in a story. If I start a sentence with anything resembling a moral or behavioral instruction, their eyes glaze over (and they're only 3 and 7!). But start a sentence with "When I was a little girl," or "When your daddy and I were dating" and they stop whatever they are doing. I can illustrate a point about how to be kind or why we need to be careful crossing the street with a story and keep their attention, because they want to hear their aunts and uncles childhood misadventures over and over again. They beg to be told about Papa's dog Skipper who ate a whole cube of butter even though they know the story by heart. And my seven year old has just started to ask lots of questions about our first date, engagement, wedding, first apartment, and more.

I return to the Time Magazine article that reported 40% of Americans believe marriage is obsolete one final time. The Cuban American speakers's assertion got me to thinking about what effect normalizing divorce in America -- or the extinction of marriage -- will have on our children's sense of their personal heritage. What will the family stories be like for a generation of kids who have parents who are no longer a family or never were?

Jeff and I are very fortunate to be part of a long line of long marriages. All four sets of our grandparents were or are married over 50 years. His parents celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary this year, and mine their 39th. None of these marriages are perfect, but they are solid and committed. Our parents marriages are very loving; they are partners and friends. I can't tell you what kind of solidity this gives us as their children (even their grown children), and how grateful we are to have grandparents' and great-grandparents' homes to take the girls to, where they see continuity. Grandparents Gardner, who live about 60 miles away, have been together since they were teenagers! Statistically, our marriage is more likely to make it until death does us part because of our family history.

I tell my kids the stories of their grandparents on both sides: about my Grandma Arlyss, who died before they were born (we make her recipes all the time), and Jeff's Grandpa Andy who passed away before we were married (an accomplished woodworker, he made a shelf that still hangs in my daughter's room). In my heart and mind, our families' stories are intertwined because Jeff's heritage has become mine, and therefore my daughters'. What richness I have to hand down to my kids (again, lucky, lucky, lucky me).

Most people believe that kids need routines to feel safe. They need boundaries to thrive. They need clear expectations from their parents to form a good sense of self. Kids who have family dinners during the week are less likely to commit crimes and more likely to do better in school. Simply, kids need a home that is stable. I read an article in Real Simple last year quoting a sociologist whose research showed that simple family traditions, particularly at holidays -- from Christmas decorating to celebrating birthdays to family game nights -- give children higher self esteem. She said kids with traditions have a stronger sense of identity and tend to be more adaptable in social situations: qualities commonly called being "well adjusted."

There is plenty of research out there about how damaging divorce or growing up with one absent parent are for kids -- from making them at greater risk for abuse to increasing the likelihood that will drop out of school, not to mention less tangible emotional issues -- so I'm not even going to tackle that subject on any of those statistical levels. Nor is this blog an indictment of all divorce, and certainly not a personal message to the many beloved people in my life who are single parents, step-parents or considering separation in their difficult marriages.

But it's on my heart to ask just this one simple question: What kind of stories do we want this generation of children in our country to inherit? What will the cost be when their family heritage is broken, when their two parents are no longer caretakers of one anothers' histories, when the stories they tell to impart values are punctuated by the snapping branches of their family trees. So many of the next generation of kids, won't hear stories like mine, about how Grandma rode a train all night from New York City to see Grandpa where he was stationed in the South before he shipped off during World War II. Half the kids in my daughter's class won't even have fond stories of how Grandma and Grandpa met to tell their kids; their wedding pictures won't be framed objects of reverence or affection. They'll be stuck in a closet somewhere.

"Staying married for the sake of the kids" has become a negative concept, spit out of our mouths like a dirty word. For the kids' sake, let's think that through. Let's do everything we can not just to stay married, but to stay happily, healthily married. So very much is at stake. Our children's stories are at stake.

Marriage, Part II -- Getting Married Ain't No Merit Badge

"Getting married is a way to show family and friends that you have a successful personal life," says Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University and the author of The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today. "It's like the ultimate merit badge."
-- from the Time Magazine article I blogged about on Thursday, "Marriage: A Changing Institution"

My husband was working late this Monday night, and on the nights when I have the house to myself, I sometimes use the opportunity to do something completely self indulgent. Like sew something frivolous, watch a chick flick, talk on the phone with my mom for an hour, or drink a beer and eat six Peanut Butter Patty Girl Scout Cookies (that had been a really long day). This particular Monday, I watched the two-hour finale of "The Bachelor." As my husband said when he got home, that's two hours of my life that I'll never get back.

Several of my best friends watch the show (one friend even tried out for it years ago, but more as a lark than actually thinking she'd be a contestant and find the man of her dreams). So though I generally find this desperately painful to watch, I tuned in for the sake of being in on the hot gossip for the next day (I'm not proud of myself here).

I find the whole premise of this show truly offensive -- and I know I'm not saying anything unique. The whole idea of a group of gorgeous women all jockeying for the right to date and hopefully marry the same man is ridiculous at best and sick at worst. He gets both of them worked up to the point where he might propose a life-time commitment, and then the whole nation watches as the two women, dressed up like pageant queens, walk down the aisle to what could be the most magical moment of their lives or the most public humiliation.

Yet, God help me, I cried! Both for the spunky brunette who sobbed all the way home in the limo, and for the "happy" couple, who kept saying "I love you, I love you," over and over again with apparent sincerity, while the cameras zoomed in. Hurray for the poised and perfect blond! She has won herself a man! Cue happily ever after (until the after-show when it's revealed they've already pushed the wedding date back once, at which point my husband came home and switched off my TV).

The next day I had an emotional hangover. What the heck was I getting so worked up about? And then I thought of the quotation from this Johns Hopkins sociologist in Time. It said, essentially, that getting married is like the ultimate merit badge.

Even though, according to Time's survey, many Americans think marriage is becoming an anachronistic institution, people still keep getting married in America, and weddings are big, big business. Even though culturally we don't necessarily value lifetime commitments, we still love weddings, we love to see celebrities get engaged (though most of us don't really believe it will last), and we treat our friends who are getting married like girls who have just been crowned homecoming queen.

When I was in college, I was part of a co-ed Christian fraternity, a wonderful group of grounded young men and women who were very devoted to each other. To this day, they remain in my mind as one of the best examples of community I have ever experienced. Being a pious group of kids, we didn't drink, we didn't have sex. Doesn't sound like college in America, I know, but we had a great, great time. One of the things unique to our particular subculture, is that a large portion of us -- about a third I would guess -- got married to our college sweethearts right after graduation.

Being of traditional mindset, most of us gals really wanted to get married and have a family, and there was no more exciting day than when one of us announced we had just gotten engaged. (This is my own perspective, though. Perhaps not every girl felt like this.) The night I told the girls Jeff had proposed, they presented me with flowers, a homemade veil, and a bridal magazine with all their faces pasted over the models in the bridesmaids ads.

Looking back on my life, though, when I think of how I met my husband at the age of 18 and married him at 21, I thank God that I didn't make a colossal mistake. So much did I dream of being proposed to, planning a wedding, going on a honeymoon, etc, that it's a miracle I didn't pick the wrong guy just to get a guy. I will say that I believed at the time that Jeff was a responsible, honest, caring, and smart man of integrity, which are wise criteria on which to pick a spouse (thanks Mom and Dad for teaching me that). But at 21, the prefrontal cortex of my brain -- the area that controls risk assessment and decision-making -- wasn't fully formed, which is one of the reasons why teenagers do such stupid things. So it doesn't seem like I was old enough to get married.

If I believed in luck, I'd say I was lucky, lucky, lucky to find a man who turned out to be more solid and awesome than he even appeared to me when I was 20. And though I believe finding Jeff had everything to do with God's hand in my life and His purposes for our family, I almost have trouble saying that, because why should He bless me with a good husband and make so many other more deserving women who want to get married wait so long?

Getting married ain't no merit badge, friends. Some of the most intelligent, kind, talented and beautiful women I know aren't married, and are still thinking it would be nice to find Mr. Right. And we all know married men and women who aren't very nice at all. There doesn't seem to me to be any correlation between being a person of value and how quickly you can find yourself a mate. I think a single woman holding out for the right guy (and vice versa) is much more admirable than someone who gets married in a hurry because she or he has bought into the hype. I wonder if our marriages would be better and our commitments last longer if we would stop treating engagements and weddings as social status symbols and more like the desperately serious commitments they are. If brides weren't seen as glorified prom queens, maybe we would take our time and get married more for the right reasons.

My old friend Jeremy commented on my last blog that too many people get married because it's what they're "supposed" to do. He's absolutely right. But wouldn't it be better if Americans refined our decision making about when and to whom to get married, rather than throw out the whole institution?

And, sorry my friends and fans of the show, but we'd all be better off if "The Bachelor" went off the air.

What Is Marriage Good For?

About a month ago, I read a Time Magazine cover story while sitting in Supercuts. I haven't been able to stop thinking of it since. I have so many thoughts on the subject that I may need to blog about it in two or three parts. The cover of the November 2010 issue read: "Marriage, What is it Good For, Anyway?" Inside, the title of the article was "Who Needs Marriage? A Changing Institution."

The article dissected and interpreted a nationwide poll conducted by a study by the Pew Research Center, in association with TIME, "exploring the contours of modern marriage and the new American family... What we found is that marriage, whatever its social, spiritual or symbolic appeal, is in purely practical terms just not as necessary as it used to be. Neither men nor women need to be married to have sex or companionship or professional success or respect or even children — yet marriage remains revered and desired."

Here are some thought provoking statistics from the survey:

* Today, only 40% of American adults are married, as opposed to 70% back in 1981 when Princess Di and Prince Charles tied the not.

*According to the Pew survey, nearly 40% of Americans think marriage is obsolete.

*Forty percent of Americans under 30 believe marriage is heading for extinction. But only 5% of those in that age group said they did not want to get married.

The week after I read this article, a pastor at our church came to speak to our MOPS group about the "myth of Mr. Right." His contention was that when conflict arises in our marriages, we tend to think it's because we chose the wrong mate: he wasn't Mr. Right after all. He said that from God's perspective, marriage is not about picking the right guy to make you happy. Instead, our spouses are the tools that God uses to make us better: compassionate, patient, forgiving, kind. Marriage teaches us about self-sacrifice. But self-sacrifice is not a popular concept, nor is it easy to do, but it is an essential part of any kind of commitment.

And in my humble opinion, that is why the idea that 20-somethings in this country think marriage is on its way out is a terrifying thought. Take marriage out of our culture, and you lose one of the primary ways that humans learn how to love one another.

Look at the toddler model for a moment. Why do we send our kids to preschool? For socialization. Throw those toddlers in a room together and they shall be forced to share, learn to use their words, and take turns. If they don't, they'll be ejected from school and lose the opportunity to finger paint.

Well, adults need constant socialization too. In my experience with myself, at the core, I'm not much less selfish than my three year old. I've just learned to hide it better (I don't throw tantrums very often, and I never, ever bite people). Of course, I've also developed values that keep me from giving into my selfish impulses. But by and large, what has changed me most has been my relationship with my husband.

Marriage is the ultimate socialization. You take two people who are used to being captain of their own ships, and throw them together in a situation where they have to share a remote control, a bed, possibly a checkbook, a closet, a toilet and a shower (I once knew a woman who said the secret to a happy marriage was separate bathrooms). Now they have to agree about how to spend their money, how cool the room has to be when they're sleeping, and if they're going to watch "American Idol" or "Modern Family." She likes Jane Austen. He likes the Terminator movies. Conflict and compromise is built into absolutely every day of married life.

I'm being glib here, but in all seriousness, the only way to navigate all these small conflicts without becoming a bitter, angry person is to die to yourself, daily. Marriage is much more about submission that personal happiness. (The good news is that as both of you learn submission, you do make each other happy more often.) And someone who knows how to set aside their own desires for someone else is going to be a better member of society. If our culture finally decides that staying married to the same person for the whole of your life is without value -- just have babies and families without even the goal of a lifetime commitment in mind -- we will have lost an incredibly precious institution.

Obviously, this constant confrontation with our spouse and our own selfishness doesn't automatically turn couples into better people. Some people get bitter and fight all the time. Some people retreat to separate corners: they get their own bedrooms, tvs, checkbooks, interests, and they interface as little as possible. They eventually lose intimacy, even though they may stay married for 50 years. These aren't the marriages that inspire awe admiration. But a couple who finds a way to process their conflicts, strengthen one anothers character and still enjoy one anothers company year after year? That's a relationship that people will revere, and a force that will transform our country.

My Husband is Spiderman

There's a great steamy scene in one of the Spiderman movies where Spidey rescues Mary Jane, and then she peels back his mask and kisses him in the rain while he's hanging upside down. Later in the saga, she's feeling a little blah about her real-life romance, and tries kissing her very nice fiance upside down while he sits on the couch, just to see if she can recreate the spark.

I always feel a little sad for the fiance in that scene. Even though he's a great looking, nice-mannered guy, there's no way he can compete, and not just because his rival is Spiderman. Kissing someone you've kissed one hundred times before is never going to give you the adrenaline rush that kissing a superhero with a secret identity -- upside down and in the rain no less -- is going to give you. That kind of thrill just usually ain't for the committed relationship folks.

Which is one of the reasons that I really love going camping with my husband. Because when we're camping, Jeff gets to be Spiderman. My domesticated man, who mainly divides his time between a desk job and pleasing the three females in our household, doesn't get to be his warrior self very often.

But when we go camping, he gets to do the man-versus-wild things that guys love. Not only does he have mad packing skills (the amount of gear he got into our car was truly a feat of modern engineering--see photo), but he can make fires, erect tents, lift heavy things, climb rocks, power and steer our kayak single-handedly, and all manner of masculine things that are fun for me to watch him do.

Our biggest thrill during our time in Pfieffer Big Sur camp ground was shooting the rapids in the river. Granted, the river is only about five feet at its deepest, and while we venture down the river, we often have to get out and wade, pulling our inflatable boats to deeper waters. But at the top of the campground is a series of pools, with boulders that form fast-flowing falls. Jeff set off on his own one afternoon armed with inner tube and paddle to ride in these dangerous waters. He came back elated.

We followed him up later that day to cheer him on. You can hear me screaming, "Go Spiderman!" on our home video. It was quite thrilling to watch him slalom through the rocks and dash down the rapids, and the heroism of it was only slightly diminished by the fact that I had pushed six-year-old Sophia down one of the same falls a few hours before.

So, out of a very fruitful family vacation, one of the best things I gleaned was that more adventure in my husband's life means more passion in our marriage. So I want to make sure he gets more manly outdoor experiences, especially on days that don't end with us sharing a tent with both our children. Because he is my super hero, and I don't want to forget it.