Guion received his MFA from the University of Virginia this weekend!
I am so very proud of him (and so thankful that his degree brought us here, to this little town that we love).
We had a great (albeit soggy) weekend with Mike, Windy, and Georgia.
Looking forward to seeing them all again soon!
Receiving his diploma from Chris Tilghman.
The lone MFA.
And now the poet doth seek a nap.
Backyard at 6:30 a.m.
As one who was raised in North Carolina, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much snow before.
Front yard.
We both got the day off, which was spent doing all of the lovely, lazy things we don’t do on typical weekdays — walk the dog in the middle of the day, paint one’s nails (me; I keep offering to paint Guion’s and he keeps declining), read several books, make real oatmeal, host Chelsea and her pups (Annie and Nell) over for a midday play-date.
We were also among the lucky ones in that we never lost power. I think we’re still on the hospital power grid or something, which surely helps.
The big decision we made this week is that we are going to become a foster home for dogs from Pyrrha’s rescue, Southeast German Shepherd Rescue. We may have our first foster this weekend, and I am very excited and nervous about it. I have wanted to foster for a long time now, and thanks to Guion’s support and our wonderful landlords’ approval, I think now is a great time to accomplish that item on the Life List. (If you care even mildly about following this fostering adventure, you can rest assured that I will be blogging about it at Doggerel.) Antsy with post-cabin fever energy, I set up the second crate in the “dog room” tonight and started getting really excited about this challenge.
For now, though, I am thankful to have had an extra day to just spend with my husband and my dog. I do love them so.
Lent begins this week, and Guion and I have been discussing our aspirations for this season of reflection and anticipation. These are our goals for Lent:
And for me:
More peace, more grace!
The upside of a quiet weekend is ample time to think, the kind of loose thinking that occurs when one is being profoundly unproductive, when one should be studying for an investment exam but is instead looking up rough collies for adoption and reading a funny but poorly structured feminist memoir. The kind of thinking that occurs in those spaces.
I have been thinking about: how the Old Testament has become more difficult to me over time; Georgia the puppy; the anecdotal mystery of why you always see so many nurses out smoking; the appalling state of reproductive rights for women in the world, not to mention the United States; my siblings; other people’s siblings; more heartbroken, beloved friends; Anne Sexton; scars; the appalling state of the world in which teens are getting the majority of their sex education from porn; fonts; the virtue of getting to stay and not die.
And then I look up and see Guion, playing guitar, writing new songs, and I realize that we are inhabiting wholly different spaces. His mind is fully engaged, 5,000 miles away from mine, but we can stop, make eye contact, and then there we are, together; we meet each other again.
Hurricane Sandy was a non-event in Charlottesville, but the whole city shut down anyway, so we had the whole day yesterday to read, lounge about, drink tea, and watch inordinate amounts of TV. I’m not complaining. I started writing our Christmas cards and painted my nails and finished two books. A productive hibernation.
Thinking about my fellow East Coasters who were not so lucky. Hope that power is restored soon and that you all remain warm and safe!
Saturday night, we attended the latter half of a Halloween progressive party. (A party that progresses from house to house, not a party that supports liberal politicians in costume.)
We went as Emily Dickinson and Mitt-ROM-knee:
We also saw “American Gothic” (faithfully recreated by Hannah and Ethan):
50 Shades of Grey and Rosie the Riveter (Celeste and Emily):
And your middle-school yearbook photo (Casey):
We have creative friends.
Our weekend with Angela and Marshall was so peaceful and uneventful. I felt very guilty about it, though. Who wants to take a train all the way from New York City just to sit in our grubby kitchen? Apparently these two did, because they were very good sports about our weekend and about our very diminished hospitality skills.
We had slow breakfasts of Brooklyn’s finest bagels. We drank lots of tea. We sat around and looked at each other. We got a glimpse of Angela and Marshall’s high-minded New York life by watching Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan. We had “Asian fusion tapas” at Bang! We walked to the farmers’ market with Pyrrha, and Angela bought us a beautiful bouquet. We got to FaceTime with Angela’s delightful mother, which was a dream come true. We listened to music. We stood around in the backyard, looking at plants.
Now we just have to take a trip to New York and do all of the same things.
P.S. And just for kicks, here’s a shot of my sexy husband.
20 September 2008: Prehistoric Nettles! Guion performs for one of the first times in Chapel Hill, in the basement of the Student Union.
20 September 2009: A rare moment of quiet in the kitchen at McCauley Street, the house I lived in during my senior year at UNC. I don’t think this kitchen ever looked this clean again.
18 September 2010: Hiking Crabtree Falls with our new friends, Sam, Sean, and Julie. Sam’s apple rolled down a rock face right before this photo was taken, but he decided to eat it anyway.
24 September 2011: Jonathan and I visit Catherine and Ava in Virginia Beach. Here we are looking out from Balboa Towers.
17 September 2012: Pyrrha, lazing around the house. Kind of feeling like I might do a third 365 Project (first done in 2008, second done from 2009-2010), maybe starting in January 2013? I miss being able to look back through the years and remember every single day. I am reminded that I have the most boring, well-documented life. But it makes me happy and I think my memory gets an artificial jolt from all of those photos.
Something we are inadvertently growing.
Pre-dinner calm.
We went to Davidson this weekend, for Chris and Lauren’s wedding. It was one of those rare weekends back home in which most of the time was spent with BOYS. (With Kelsey and Grace gone, there is little incentive to fill up the harem.)
Boys, boys, boys:
Sam, all grown up.
Jak and Pyrrha.
Husband.
Caleb.
Da-Dan and his youngest daughter.
Gotta love boys. Patrick also showed up, but he is not featured here, as I was in the throes of post-wedding food poisoning when he arrived. So happy to get to see him, too.
Food poisoning aside, we had a lovely, calm weekend. Pyrrha acted like she owned the place. She’s become very comfortable with Davidson living and I daresay she was rather disappointed to come back to our shack after three days at the family estate. Dublin has become her constant companion and has been showing her the Ways of the Normal Dog.
You may have noticed an improvement in photo quality (although not necessarily photo skill). This is because I picked up my new camera, Louis, which I bought from Grace. I feel very honored to have him in my care. I am sure I won’t use him half as well as his first owner, but I am going to do my best to learn everything I can. There is so much to learn! It is a formidable piece of equipment.
How nice to be away, how nice to be home.
We grew this.
I am the lax gardener in this household. But I did grow that succulent little watermelon in the photo above. (And by “grow,” I mean plant the seedlings way too close together and leave them to their own devices for two months and then take credit for the beautiful harvest.) We had it for lunch yesterday and it was perfect.
Guion, it turns out, is the better homemaker. He is the champion gardener. He is the master chef. He is the kitchen sink doctor. And I am perfectly OK with him being all of these things. My femininity does not suffer a whit.
I thought it would. When we were first married, I wanted to follow those traditional Southern-woman housekeeping roles. I had to be the better cook. I had to have this instinctive green thumb. I had to fold hand towels in thirds. If I couldn’t or didn’t, I would be a bad wife. Many women imply this, even today. They see this 1950s housekeeping mold as The Gold Standard of matrimony and domestic living: The proper wife stays home, gardens, tidies rooms, makes 95% of the food (leaving only the grilling and the slicing of meats to the husband); the proper husband goes to work, mows the lawn, and fixes broken appliances. These are the roles and you stick to them.
This, obviously, is a fading archetype in modern America. And yet I wanted to follow it. Sometimes, when I do spend time with family (particularly my maternal side of the family), I feel like the lesser wife, the domestic failure. I was raised, after all, by and among these paragons of domestic virtue, the hostesses of wide repute, the kitchen gourmets of local renown. And so it is astonishing to my relatives that my husband is the one in the kitchen, whipping up some chutney from the tomatoes he grew in the backyard. Isn’t that women’s work? The men in my family can barely wash a dish, much less follow a complex English recipe from produce they harvested. And here is my hard-working, housekeeping husband, the culinary trailblazer. He is pure mystery to them all. They stare at him with bemused wonder.
I have always thought that my attainment of true womanhood, of authentic femininity would lie in my inherent ability to whip up a pound cake, hem a skirt, and grow daffodils. I cannot do any of these things. I despise DIY home decor projects. I cannot improvise a marinade. I have never learned how to cut a man’s hair myself. And for the first time in our marriage, I am not ashamed to admit any of these things. I do not feel like a lesser woman or a bad wife anymore.
All this to say: I don’t know what kind of wife I am. I am not the traditional model. But I do know that I found myself a very, very good husband. And we make it work.
