As our wedding day approaches, I'm finding myself wanting to write about marriage more and more.* To muse on why we do this - why we put ourselves through shoe buying and guest lists and what kind of a dress we want. Because while all this stuff can be both fun and maddening, it's not the point. This wedding planning is just a snippet of our lives, it's a moment of transition between one phase and then next. We're struggling to find our way out of our cocoon, exhilarated and terrified to unfold our new wings.
This snippet on marriage is from a Real Simple article (Febuary 2008) called Love Letters - two letters written by writers Cathi Hanauer and Daniel Jones, after fifteen years of marriage. It is such a honest portrait of what I hope married life will bring us, that I clipped this article and re-read it from time to time. So now, I'm sharing Cathi Hanauer's words with you:
As Rickie Lee Jones put it in our wedding song, "If you fall, I'll pick you up/ pick you up" - and so far you do. To me, that's what married love is. I love you for continuing to love me despite my contradictions, for finding me endearing when others might find me impossible. And I love you for sharing my life vision, even if I am a little more restless while you're happy to stay home and build a stone wall in the front garden, like you did last weekend. A pretty little wall to go with the patio you laid out back two summers ago. So there it is. The nice house, the nice life we've build together - these days full of kids and pets and books and sports and artwork and music, with just a little bitching now and then.
Here's to the rest of it.
Love, Me
*Don't worry, we're still going to talk about weddings too, silly buttons.
(apologies for not linking to the whole article, which you all would love. It does not appear to be online.)
Thursday, June 11, 2009
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13 comments:
It's silly BUDDONS, Meg.
xo
I love being married.
Sharing a life vision. Yes.
Your impulse makes an enormous amount of sense. Quite practical, even to begin to think about marriage as the wedding gets closer:).
I subscribed to Real Simple last year. Now I want to go home and sift through my old mags to see if I still have that one. *sigh*
Thats something for the fridge.
Yes yes yes. The mister and I were kind of snuggly this morning still feeling lovey dovey after our session with our rabbi. I told him, "You know me better than anyone else in the world." He smiled. I keep thinking lately about how we, two sometimes different, sometimes identical, people are binding ourselves together like this--what that means--and it's so powerful.
Yes! Exactly. I remember loving this article (yes, I subscribe to Real Simple, I'm not only a newlywed but much more importantly a mommy, a career woman, and a homeowner/maker). Wedding planning is a great (and sometimes not so great) project, but it does not a marriage or a life makes. What counts is choosing this person again and again as the years go by, throughout what gets thrown at you.
Silly Buttons?
That's a new one and I like it.
my beloved and I have been reading a lot about "what this all means" and we are so thrilled to keep learning about the intimacy, the nature of love, and all the awesome spiritual stuff that goes along with it...
this ain't no walk in the park!
I just teared up, like I seem to do every time I think about marriage and not the wedding. This is so perfectly us and so perfectly what I want in fifteen years. This line, especially, hit me:
"And I love you for sharing my life vision, even if I am a little more restless while you're happy to stay home and build a stone wall in the front garden, like you did last weekend."
Oh thank you for my midday teary smile.
a breath of fresh air. thank you. it's really not about the wedding... it's about what comes after. i can't wait for november!
Oh yes - let's do some musing on marriage.
I went to my library and got the back issue to read the article. Lovely, just lovely.
This is like a relieved sigh. We need more of this, when the focus is often on cake. Which is more important: cake? or a love that lasts?
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