To us!
Yo, G: Here’s an idea. Let’s be married FOREVER, OK?
Hard to believe we’ve been married for three years. The days pass in joyful bliss and wonderment with champagne fairies and moonbeams!
But for real. I love this man more and more all the time. Life with him is really, really, really good.
Photos © Meredith Perdue.
(c) Grace Farson.
This past weekend was so perfect in every way. I was blessed to witness my beloved sister marry one of my dear friends. I was overwhelmed by her happiness, by the love that exists between them, by the idyllic weather, by the community created by our families and friends. The wedding couldn’t have been more beautiful.
I cried at multiple points and could even cry again just thinking about the two of them. This was surprising to me. I didn’t cry in my own wedding. (Instead, I was busy hissing at Guion not to cry during our vows, because then I would really lose it.) I started crying when Kelsey walked down the aisle, when she was saying her vows, even when Grace and I dropped them off at the hotel! (And for this, I was much mocked by Grace, who has no heart.) I just LOVE THEM a lot, OK?
Even though the ceremony was everything we hoped and dreamed it would be, I am far more thrilled by the fact that Kelsey and Alex are married. They have a whole lifetime together, to love and be loved, to make each other more and more into the likeness of Christ. I am so happy for them and I can’t wait to see them over the upcoming winter holidays. (I am a little peeved that they wouldn’t let me stowaway on their tropical honeymoon, however… Why can’t I tag along and lounge on the beach for a week? Come on, guys. You wouldn’t even know I was there.)
(Here are my few photos from the weekend, if you care. I was much too busy to take many, but the few I have are special to me.)
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.
This weekend, we were charmed to keep the company of Ann-Marie and Shaun. They are very wonderful, fun, and engaging and we are always thrilled to have them as house guests. After they got in on Saturday night, we walked to the downtown mall with Pyrrha and had dinner at The Whiskey Jar.
Ann-Marie!
Shaun!
Guion!
Pyrrha!
Sunday night, we started a rousing discussion on the definition of marriage. It was energetic and compelling and thought-provoking and it even made me miss college a little. Remember college? Remember sitting around and having conversations like that all night long? We don’t do that much anymore. And maybe it’s good that we don’t, it’s good that we’ve moved on from finding our opinions so valuable, but at the same time, I do sincerely miss that heated exchange of ideas. It’s something I’ve always loved.
Does this blog feel a bit stale to you? I’ve been getting steadily worse at this hobby.
We have already had such a busy summer, but it has been a very happy one.
Guion!
As we near our second anniversary (!), I’ve been thinking about how fun it has been to be married to this dude. Here’s a list of stuff Guion is good at:
Guion! Man! You are the best.
Wadi Bani Khalid. Source: Flickr user Alun W
From “After an Absence”
Linda Pastan
I had even forgotten how married love
is a territory more mysterious
the more it is explored, like one of those terrains
you read about, a garden in the desert
where you stoop to drink, never knowing
if your mouth will fill with water or sand.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
For Guion. Thanks for taking me to poetry readings, for getting our new car fixed after an anonymous idiot plowed into it, for listening to me, for taking me on dates, for helping me with whatever I need. Happy Friday.
Click for source.
Memory Is Like a Shotgun Kicking You Near the Heart
By Frank Stanford
I get up, walk around the weeds
By the side of the road with a flashlight
Looking for the run-over cat
I hear crying.
I think of the hair growing on the dead,
Any motion without sound,
The stars, the seed ticks
Already past my knees,
The moon beating its dark bush.
I take the deer path
Down the side of the hill to the lake,
Wade the cold water.
My light draws the minnows,
Shines through them, goes dead.
Following the shore
I choose the long way home
Past the government camping grounds,
And see where the weeds have been
Beaten down,
Hear the generator on the Winnebago purring.
The children of the tourists
Are under the wheels
Like a covered wagon.
They scratch in their sleep
Until they bleed.
When I get home
I drink a glass of milk in the dark.
She gets up, comes into the room naked
With her split pillow,
Says what’s wrong,
I say an eyelash.
. . . . . . . . .
OK, so it’s kind of a rough poem to leave you with for the weekend, but WHOA. Isn’t it awesome? Stanford is Guion’s general muse. We’re off for the weekend to see Daniel and Lauren get married and, boy, are we pumped for them! See you Monday!
The day we were married. Source: Meredith Perdue
These days, I’m thinking a lot about the shifting model of marriage. Marriage is shaking up and many in my demographic (the ones who married very young and very Christian) are uneasy about how to proceed. Departing from the traditional marriage model–where the husband makes most if not all of the money, the wife stays home with the kids–is an issue that has frequently come up among my friends who also married young. We start talking about leadership, earning potential, childrearing, and power structures and all hell breaks loose. It’s perhaps a very weird time to be 23, Christian, and married. This subset I belong to is definitely in the American minority.
Here’s a large part of the issue. From anecdotal reports, in the newly formed households of my young married friends, the woman is more likely to be the breadwinner. Wives surpassing husbands in income might still be an unusual thing overall, but I get the sense that it’s an increasingly common phenomenon. (Hanna Rosin would likely back me up on it.) This is a great thing on the whole, that women are FINALLY starting to earn as much (if not more than) men, but it certainly shakes the foundation of the “Leave it to Beaver” marriage we all know and secretly idolize.
I can’t tell you how many different variations of this conversation I have had with young wives since I got married. Long conversations along these lines: I make more money than he does; what is going to happen when we have kids? What if I want to stay home but can’t financially? Will our children suffer if I work? (Side note from the Woolf scholar side of me: These are questions that men never somehow have to ask.) We’re all scrambling around, looking for a model, a standard–anything we can point to–but the bold reality is that we are being forced to make a new standard, a new model for modern marriage. It’s a topic that seems to be constantly cropping up among women, and not just the young Christian ones. I was really encouraged to know that I’m not the only one thinking about it, after having read this thoughtful piece by Jenna from Sweet Fine Day, “When You’re the Breadwinner in the Family.”
As children of the Great Recession, we are grappling with the traditional marriage model in a way that our parents and grandparents did not have to. These days, it is often essential that both the husband and wife work; staying at home with the kids is an increasingly rare luxury.
So. Everything is changing. But maybe we’re just going back to the way things used to be? As external support, I point to a segment from Kate Bolick’s recent cover story for The Atlantic Monthly, “All the Single Ladies:”
Not until the 18th century did labor begin to be divided along a sharp line: wage-earning for the men and unpaid maintenance of household and children for the women. [Social historian Stephanie] Coontz notes that as recently as the late 17th century, women’s contributions to the family economy were openly recognized, and advice books urged husbands and wives to share domestic tasks. But as labor became separated, so did our spheres of experience—the marketplace versus the home—one founded on reason and action, the other on compassion and comfort. Not until the post-war gains of the 1950s, however, were a majority of American families able to actually afford living off a single breadwinner.
All of this was intriguing, for sure—but even more surprising to Coontz was the realization that those alarmed reporters and audiences might be onto something. Coontz still didn’t think that marriage was falling apart, but she came to see that it was undergoing a transformation far more radical than anyone could have predicted, and that our current attitudes and arrangements are without precedent. “Today we are experiencing a historical revolution every bit as wrenching, far-reaching, and irreversible as the Industrial Revolution,” she wrote.
Last summer I called Coontz to talk to her about this revolution. “We are without a doubt in the midst of an extraordinary sea change,” she told me. “The transformation is momentous—immensely liberating and immensely scary. When it comes to what people actually want and expect from marriage and relationships, and how they organize their sexual and romantic lives, all the old ways have broken down.” (The Atlantic Monthly)
So, if the old ways have broken down, where do we go from here? I think that’s the question that remains firmly lodged in our minds, but I have come to a place of seeing the crumbling traditional marriage model as a non-threatening event. Instead, I see it is a hopeful frontier. To be young and married in 2011! I’ve decided to see my life status as a gift, to suspend judgment on non-traditional marriage models, to appreciate the fact that we’re all figuring it out for ourselves and that it is high time to reject the cultural law that says we all have to practice marriage in the exact same way.
General rule: If I don’t have any photos from the weekend, it means that we had a very peaceful, uneventful one, which, in this case, was true. Except for the mice infestation, which is something I am not brave enough to discuss right now.
Snax:
Formerly Known As. A thoughtful and great article by a Christian man on why he decided to take his wife’s name when they married. (The Curator)
Kyoko Hamada: Letter to Fukushima. A poignant photo essay and journal of a photographer’s journey back to Fukushima. As the media frenzy dies down, the residents of Fukushima still carry on their extremely difficult lives in a barren town. (The New Yorker)
Veiled. Unbelievable Italian sculptures of veiled women. I remember my mother talking about the incredible beauty of these in an art book when I was young. Since then, I’ve always been mesmerized by them. (Even Cleveland)
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Write The Marriage Plot. Jeffrey Eugenides reflects on writing his long-awaited second third (edit: Thanks, Jonathan) novel, which appears this month, nearly nine years after Middlesex. (The Millions)
Ten Types of Writer’s Block (and How to Overcome Them). A practical list for stuck writers. Eugenides himself might have appreciated this. (io9)
Flick Chicks. Mindy Kaling reflects on the absurd and limited number of women that are permitted to appear in romantic comedies. My favorite tropes: “The Klutz” and “The Forty-Two-Year-Old Mother of the Thirty-Year-Old Male Lead.” (The New Yorker)
All Work and No Play: Why Your Kids Are More Anxious, Depressed. Now this is truly sad. (The Atlantic)
Alyson Fox. Fox shoots a series of very different women, all wearing the same shade of Revlon lipstick. (Where the Lovely Things Are)
Tom Boy. A serious shoot for serious women. I like it. (Wolf Eyebrows)
Gun Safety Class at an Indiana School, 1956. Their faces in that first frame! This is so classic BOY. (Retronaut)
Suspended Greenhouse Lamp. Want! Although I get this feeling that the plants would start to singe over time… (Unruly Things)
Ask an Orthodox Christian. Orthodox Christianity is also incredibly fascinating to me, and it seems that way for all of the people who asked questions here, because they all sound like they want to convert. Interesting answers, though! (Rachel Held Evans)
It’s Nearly Halloween. Yet another reason why I have always deeply disliked Halloween. (Gemma Correll)
Another busy weekend in North Carolina: Guion backed Daniel Levi Goans at his CD release show in Greensboro, and I was in Charlotte/Davidson, hanging out with my fam and celebrating with Eva and Peter.
Grace was Eva and Peter’s wedding photographer and has just put up some of her amazing photos from their “first look” on the railroad tracks. Check it out.
Quick selection of photos below:
We took Ally out for a (belated) birthday brunch at The Egg.
The beautiful, happy bride gets dressed.
Eva and Peter get hitched! At the Green Rice Gallery in Charlotte.
Thumbnail from phone picture from a home video. Proof that Sam was the cutest child ever to live.
Snax!
“Cruel,” by St. Vincent. New favorite song (I’m OBSESSED) and album. I can’t wait for her concert here in October! This music video is also totally crazy and creepy. (The Fox Is Black)
The Psychologist. Why novelist Vladimir Nabokov may have actually been the greatest psychologist of his time. (The American Scholar)
The Writer’s Voice. A reflection on the experience of hearing a great writer read his or her own work–with links! Listen to the dulcet tones of Flannery O’Connor, W.B. Yeats, Philip Larkin, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and J.M. Coetzee. (The Book Bench, The New Yorker)
Al Gore’s Excellent Timing. You know all this apocalyptic weather we’ve been having lately? Al Gore chimes in on a reason, and it’s not the Second Coming. These statistics are chilling… or should I say warming? (The Atlantic)
Bookish Illustrations. Lizzy Stewart’s solemn and wonderful sketched book covers for beloved classics. (Wolf Eyebrows)
Meg Gleason: Personalized Stationery. Love these cards, especially the last one in the set of photos. (Design Work Life)
Farm Life. What an idyllic childhood Courtney must have had… Jealous! (Radiate)
Your Wild Horses. Wild, white horses, galloping in the surf? Of course these photos are going to be amazing. (Eye Poetry)
Got a Girl Crush On: Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken. Did this really happen?? Has anyone seen this movie? (Got a Girl Crush)
Pen on Paper: A Defense of Writing. Yet another article about why handwriting matters, this time from The Curator. (The Curator)
Chat History. A true and heartbreaking romance, rendered in Gchat. (Good)
The Dark Side of the Placebo Effect: When Intense Belief Kills. Apparently, if you believe too hard, you can die. (The Atlantic)
Dr. Neubronner’s Miniature Pigeon Camera, 1903. Um, awesome. (How to Be a Retronaut)
