A common fear

A couple of weeks ago I was totally rude to a friend of mine. She was all vulnerable and shared with me that she didn't know what to do for a quilt square for our wedding quilt. She just didn't think she could come up with something good enough.

I told her that was bullshit.

I used my nicest voice, though. I promise.

This is one of the women who taught me how to sew and made that first fateful trip to the Renaissance Faire with me when we were in high school. She weaves and is doing the flowers for the wedding.

I could not be more explicit in the different invitations to make a quilt square that whatever folks come up with will delight us.

Sure, my friend gets a little grace for the perfectionism of artists but seriously. One measly little quilt square? Bullshit. She smiled and said she'd get started.

I tell this story to tell folks that if my beautiful artistic, crafty friend is feeling a little timid about this project, there are probably many of you out there who are also feeling a little timid.

That's OK. Acknowledge the fear, know you're not alone and then move past it. It's that teenage voice that still lives in the back of your head that whispers that other people are total monsters who will judge you and chop off your head if you stick your neck out. That teenage voice is not very bright. Are there people out there who will do that? Of course. Are Jacob and I those people? Not a chance.

This is a true case of it's-the-thought-that-counts, only this time it's more like it's-the-effort-that-counts. Seriously, if you took the minimum time of going to the fabric store, selecting a fabric you liked and sending it to us, we'd be over the moon. Measuring and cutting it into a 6 inch square? Delirious. Cutting and piecing multiple fabrics? We'll think you're some kind of super-hero.

While I was in Florida recently for my cousin's wedding, I used 1/4 of my suitcase to take all of my green fabric with me and to walk them through making their squares. I tried to take a picture of their results to encourage you and make you jealous of my time at the beach. Well, I was punished for that thought because the lens steamed up as soon as I stepped out of the air conditioning but I didn't realize it.

This is the square my 12-year-old cousin Jake made.

Isn't that amazing? A 12-year-old boy! I love all of these. My uncle's fruit theme (one quadrant was bugs since I only had three fruit fabrics), my aunt's strawberries and vegetables, my cousin Eliza's huge Hawaiian-esque floral mix,my cousin Eva's random mix. They are all beautiful and have varying levels of quality in their stitching. That's OK, too. I'll reinforce some of their seams on my machine. Also, some of them ended up too big but I'm happy to cut them down to the right size.

So, you can do it. We want you to do it. It will be amazing to gather them all together into one blanket that will keep our children warm on the couch as we read them stories.

A note - I wrote this for the "wedding" blog for our guests but I'm afraid the tone isn't right. I figured I try it out on you all here. What do you think? Constructive criticism? What are your thoughts on the use of the word "bullshit"? It's kind of necessary to the story, don't you think? But maybe it will turn off readers who don't know me. Let me know what you think, please.

Isis Rising

So, one of my closest friends has started a blog with a purpose. She is trying to explore race, gender, culture and identity: all topics that are not strange to the readers of this blog.

She writes:

If you're anything like me, when you start something new, you want to shield it from the world, hold it close to your chest away from prying eyes, and whisper to it gently until you think it can take the real world. But it occurs to me that if I keep doing it, my project is never going to grow.
. . .
The blog is both a launch and sounding pad, and also hopefully a focal point for other people who are interested in participating in what I'm putting down.
. . .
But enough shadow and whispering; it's time for this thing to see the light of the world now. So take a look; and be in touch.

She calls the blog Isis Rising and you can follow that link to find it.

I've looked around some and think it's totally worth your time. Bookmark it or add it to your reader. You won't be disappointed.

Continually mending the world

I've said before that invitations are not really my thing. I can fondle a beautiful card stock with offset printing with the best of them. However, creating a assembly line to put the complicated things together was not high on my list of things to craft for this wedding. (An assembly line for the yarmulkes with my bridal brigade is a totally different matter.) :-)

However, I have a few illustrators that I really love. I approached one of them about custom work and although that was too expensive, she said we could use a digital image of something she had already created for free.

Sweet!

This illustrator is the lovely and talented Johanna Wright and you can view her work here. You may remember her from an earlier post.

So, my lovely sister-in-law is studying medical illustration, which is a really specialized form of graphic design. She graciously agreed to design the invitation and I was just going to use my favorite photo printing shop to print them up as 5x7 photos. Good enough for anyone's fridge, right?


However, I had a moment of inspiration when I realized that I could just as easily and inexpensively have them printed on fabric by Spoonflower. If there is a theme to our wedding, it is mending the world and we're using patchwork quilts to symbolize that. So, we'll send out 5x7 patches. Pretty cool, huh?

The fabric arrived the other day and I am chomping at the bit to start cutting it.

We'll have simple postcards for RSVPs (we have too many non-tech guests for online RSVP to work for us). I'll show you the design for those when I have it. A little cliffhanger: it also features the art of Johanna Wright.

This process just keeps getting more and more exciting. Recently, I read a profile of a wedding that just sounds torturous in its attempts to be "offbeat" and just comes off sounding disorganized and poorly thought-out. With this project I realize that when I look back on this wedding it will have a lot of unique elements but none of of them will have been included just to be different. Each will be an organic development of what Jacob and I are already doing in our lives. I have been using Spoonflower to make fabrics for quilts for other couples. And eureka, we can also use it for our own! Cool!

That's how I like things. Comfortable.

Compare and Contrast

A couple of weekends ago, the woman who introduced Jacob to me got married. She and her husband are both pastors and their wedding was exactly the one that - when I pictured another wedding - I pictured for myself before I met Jacob.

Since I had sworn off men who wouldn't understand my desire for the spiritual, I assumed that I would marry another Christian, you know, if I could find one who didn't have any weird, latent misogynistic tendencies. We would do Bible studies together at the kitchen table and volunteer to be counselors for the high school camping trip at our church. More importantly, when I needed to talk about the decisions I had to make in life, he would understand the language I was using and the framework that I was making the decisions within. I would be known and my future husband would be able to support me fully. This would be reflected in our wedding that would be casual and liturgical, with both of us participating fully in its solemnity and fun. It would be very church-y with communion and the guests singing hymns (I had to settle for hymns being played by the organist as mood-setting music before the ceremony in my first wedding). There would be prayer and people would know that God was there. The very sure knowledge that I have that God loves me and that I know she loves me because she sent us Jesus would be felt by everyone who attended. There would be no altar call but my friends would more fully understand the appeal of the religion to me because they had experienced this wedding. (My cousin's pastor used to shout, "Play it again Ramona!" as they sang Victory in Jesus. We all loved the story so much that this Presbyterian knows all the words.)

(By the way, these three old white people crank it OUT. My family was not this funky. Just as weird; not as syncopated.)

But then I did meet Jacob and my desire for a man who held spirituality in the same spot on his priority list was fulfilled in a way that I never expected. As the months of our courtship went on and we began to imagine what our lives would look like if they included each other for the rest of them, I quickly lost track of that earlier relationship fantasy. The project of discovering a joint spiritual practice was so delightful and difficult that it dominated my field of vision.

So, Tabitha and Shane get married. She carries the bouquet I made and he wears the boutonniere I crafted. They had a praise team from their other church leading us all in song. They had two officiants who know them personally because both Tabitha and Shane are pastors themselves. In fact, they met in Divinity School. It was a raucous time since so many guests pitched in to create the event and finally got to enjoy the fruits of their labor. The more charismatic and evangelical pastor jokingly(?) attempted to convert the more WASP-y, non-denominational pastor (who I know and who does amazing social justice work) to his "one, true church." I loved the Jesus banter that arose out of a culture that I know so well. It was all in my language. Then, they serve communion to the congregation. They were so comfortable in their roles as spiritual people that the ritual of blessing the elements was both casual and sacred. At one moment, they messed something up and Shane leaned over out of habit to kiss Tabitha in what must have been a private ritual of reconciliation and love. They caught themselves in time so that they wouldn't kiss before they were announced formally.

In short, it was the wedding I always thought I'd have.

And I'm OK with that. However, I felt out of sorts for most of the evening and the next couple of days. I never doubted my choice of a life with Jacob. That wasn't it. But being confronted with a realization of one of made dreams forced me to consider it again.

When Jacob and I were first getting serious, I struggled with the transition from a life of personal independence to a new life of inter-dependence and compromise. My friend Shawna, who had just finished her chaplaincy at a local hospital, said, "All change, even good change, requires a period of mourning for the future you thought you would have." I knew this to be true because of my divorce. I will always say that the hardest part was picturing a future different from the one he and I planned together. For instance, while I was on the island, I had an intense experience in a spiritual circle with 4 other women in which they created a safe space through song and incense and I wept for the children that my ex-husband and I had already named and imagined distinct personalities for but whom I would never meet. So, I knew this to be true but had never applied it to good change.

That conversation made me comfortable with allowing myself to struggle internally without doubting the decision. That early experience helped me with Tabitha's wedding weekend. I knew that my mind and my heart had to compare what could have been with what will most likely be. The compare and contrast in itself does not signify that the choice is wrong. In fact, the process led me to a place of greater confidence in our relationship because in every comparison, life with Jacob was far and away a better option.

For instance, in addition to the wedding as option, my study group that I used to be close to were all in attendance. Jacob and I had arrived earlier than they had and so sat with his friends from college who were already there. I felt myself feeling a little resentful that I couldn't sit with my delightfully sarcastic friends and make snarky comments during the service, which is by far one of the most entertaining things that I ever participate in my life. Instead I had to sit with my earnest fiance who occasionally tells me that something I've said was mean, rather than laughing like I wanted him to. Worse, I have to sit with his friends who will probably think I'm mean to. If I sat with my friends then I would be able to be appreciated and loved since they love snarky comments as much as I do. That was part of our chemistry. We functioned at a level of trust that we were all good people and that our jokes were just jokes, not devious flank attacks.

This struggle was a perfect example of comparing a life that I used to want to the life I have chosen. I won't give up being sarcastic completely and I won't completely forgo my friends in favor of his. But the reality is that in a life with Jacob, I will be less sarcastic because he doesn't laugh as often at those kind of jokes and sometimes they hurt his feelings. And I will spend less time with my friends just like he will so that some of my friend time can be spent with his friends.

So, since the service hadn't started yet, I went over to see my friends and made some jokes and thought I was pretty cool. But when I went back to sit with Jacob, I realized that whoever else we sat with, I wanted to sit with him. I wanted to feel him squeeze my hand whenever the pastor says something that applies to us, too. I wanted to lean my head on his shoulder and dream about our wedding and know from his small sighs that he was thinking about the same thing. I just wanted to be with him.

I know that Jacob had similar second thoughts when we attended an Orthodox Jewish wedding a few weeks ago. We talked and talked and talked through that and now it was my turn. These experiences make us stronger and I'm glad for them. This process is so much more than I could have ever fantasized about. Jacob prays with me and is learning how to speak my faith language so that when I need to suss something out with someone who understands the framework I'm working within, he'll be able to help. But in addition to this, he can see my moral quandaries with an outsider's eye and help me out of the box when I get stuck. Our wedding reflects this. Our ketubah says more than simple vows could have said. We will complete the ritual of getting married by signing it there during the ceremony. We'll probably have a laying-on of hands so that present clergy can bless us. Our chuppah will be a symbol of the community that surrounds us. It will be comfortable and sacred. It will be the wedding that I never knew I wanted.

God is good and unexpected. I appreciate her grace in having offered Jacob to me.

C.A.R.S.

Yesterday, I gave away my car.

Jacob and I don't need two to exist in the city since he normally takes the bus or his bike to work. (I hope to get a job in the Loop so I can green it to work, as well.)

We knew this when I first moved to his condo in December but it was too early then for me to get rid of all my assets on this love affair. My kick-ass apartment and much of my furniture were already gone. I had too much sense to risk having to buy a new car if things didn't work out. Luckily, my friend Tabitha had her parked car completely totaled by a passing snow plow in the middle of the night(it ended up turned around 180 degrees and in the middle of the near-by intersection). Actually, there was no proof that it was a snowplow but, come on. What else could it have been?

So, it wasn't lucky for Tabitha. But she needed just an interim car since she'd move to Minnesota after graduation and her wedding to be with her husband and wouldn't need a car there. This was lucky for us. She rented my car from me for the cost of the insurance, ensuring it would be there for the next six if I needed it. A win-win scenario.

But now, it was time to give the car away. If things don't work between Jacob and I now, I'll have much bigger things to worry about than buying a new car. And since Jacob doesn't drive stick-shift and his crappy old car (as opposed to my crappy old car) needs less work/money to get it to peak condition.

Willow Creek runs a ministry called the C.A.R.S. ministry that fixes up cars like mine and gives them to single moms that need them. They use volunteer mechanics and sell some cars that are not appropriate for families in order to raise the cash to cover their expenses. It's a pretty good non-profit model that is large enough to reap the benefits of the economies of scale. They had a tow-truck come and pick up my car this morning.

I have loved this car. It has taken me to Orcas Island and back and been a zillion places in between in the last 10 years. But after 107,000 miles it is time to say good-bye. Good-bye to the I Love Portillos sticker, the Shearwater Kayaks sticker and the Illinois Wesleyan Alumni sticker that was purchased shortly after my divorce when I was groping for an identity, any identity since I couldn't be Dennis' wife anymore. Good-bye to the slow-leaking front tire and the slow-leaking, sometimes overheating coolant system. Good-bye to the new rack and pinion steering and the prematurely new timing chain. Good-bye to stick shift, a loss I will actually mourn as I drive the automatic transition of a tiny Nissan.

Good-bye, Jolene. You have served honorably and well.

Ketubah

Jacob and I have finalized the wording of our ketubah! A ketubah is a formal wedding contract in the Jewish tradition. Many people say that its original incarnation was a feminist act since it belonged to the wife and guaranteed that the man she married would provide for her or at least think twice about divorce since it would be costly. Still, the version that is acceptable to Orthodox rabbis in Israel (oddly, a more important distinction than you might think) states that the man acquires the wife and only men can witness the contract.

Since our marriage is considered illegitimate by Orthodox rabbis in Israel, anyway, Jacob and I decided to create our own contract and to sign it during our ceremony. We might also read it to our guests like my friends did last weekend with their "family mission statement."

We borrowed some lines about the history of covenants from a version that A. is using for her ketubah and used some texts from modernketubah.com as a rough draft. Then, we changed words and altered sentences until it felt right. At one point Jacob said, "Those sentences don't sound right," and both of us together said, "Could we use a colon?"

I suppose that we should have made a list of everything that we wanted to be included and written from scratch since I do claim to be a writer. However, that seemed a little daunting and I wasn't sure that I could get the right feel of a spiritual contract. It probably would have turned out more like a family mission statement. Using someone else's structure to build upon was very helpful.

As it was, we found that as we were adding and subtracting, each of us actually did have a list in our heads. Jacob pointed out that one draft didn't say anything about the children we hope to have. I really needed to have the hard work of marriage specifically committed to. After we thought we had a final draft, I realized in a frenzy that nowhere was our love for each other mentioned, even though both of us believe strongly that love is a deliberate action in addition to being a feeling. It was a good process and not very much stressful. The conversations stretched over two or three session over several weeks. I think the only contentious moment was when I wanted to include the name of Jesus. The name itself is really threatening to Jacob (and other Jewish people that I have met) and it took awhile for us both to calm down enough to include it.

When issues like that came up, we asked, "What do we want our children to get out of this document?" In that case, we decided that it was important that the document be undeniably interfaith.

Jewish tradition states that whenever a commandment is being fulfilled through a physical object, it should be made as beautifully as possible. To that end, many ketubot are gloriously illustrated, framed and hung in prominent places of the house. Ours will be no different. Our friend from church is both fluent in Hebrew and a stunning artist. She has agreed to create our ketubah for us. I couldn't be more pleased.

So, here is the text:

This ketubah witnesses before God and all present that on the sixth day of September in the year 2009 in the community of Chicago, IL, the holy covenant of marriage is entered into between R. and J. This agreement into which we are entering is a holy covenant like the ancient covenants of our people, made in faithfulness to stand forever. It is a covenant of protection and hope like the covenant God swore to Noah and his descendants. It is a covenant of devotion, joining hearts like the covenant David and Jonathan made. It is a covenant of mutual loving kindness like the wedding covenant between God and Children of Israel. It is a covenant of grace and peace like the covenant made between God and all humanity in the story told about Jesus. Because of this covenant, we will celebrate the flow of the seasons: in times of happiness we will cherish each other and in times of trouble we will protect each other. We will create a home built on the foundations of our traditions, and nurtured by the values of our families. We will love our children and teach them to embrace gratitude, humility, tolerance and forgiveness. We will love each other and do the hard work necessary to stay compatible. We commit to following God’s commandments and to working together toward the task of mending the world. Surrounded by family and friends, we affirm our commitment to each other as partners.

Pretty stinking cool, isn't it? This makes me even more excited to marry this man.

Not So Frequently Asked Questions, Part 2

This is continuation of an interview that A. sent me. See Part 1 here with the complete explanation. I'm happy to interview you for your blog if you leave a comment with the request.

Her second question is, "How did you get into quilting, and why do you do it?"

I honestly don't know. I remember being in the craft section at Wal-Mart in what must have been 2001 and seeing a set of clear plastic charm quilt templates on clearance from $15 to $2 or $3. I know that I couldn't ignore a deal that large. I don't remember if I already knew about charm quilts or if I read the package insert there in the store before deciding that they were for me. The combination of using lots of different fabrics, the ability to hand-piece it easily (I didn't have a working sewing machine at that point), and no need for keeping track of a rigid pattern, which allowed for my own geometric creativity was irresistible.

In 1996, I had begun tentatively dipping my toe into the water of believing that I might be capable of being an artist. Before this point, I insisted to anyone who asked that I wasn't. The problem was that one of my brothers was a very naturally talented draw-er, as well as being 8 years older than I was. This was a deadly combination. I have a very vivid memory of painting with watercolors when I was seven or eight. He came up to the table in the kitchen where I was working and demanded to know what my pitiful brush strokes were trying to be. When I told him that it was a log cabin, he said, "That's not a log cabin! I'll show you a log cabin." He took the brush from my hand and painted a gorgeous scene that used perspective and shading to create a very accurate representation of a log cabin with a stream running along beside it. I can see every detail of that painting perfectly in my head.

Now, my brother loves me and he certainly didn't know he was scarring me permanently at the time. He was just being an older brother. It's what they do. I don't resent him in the slightest. Probably, I would not have exploded so forcefully into crafts when I discovered them if I weren't reacting to this early discouragement. But since I was already frustrated with my inability to make my fingers recreat what I saw in my head and I lacked any sort of work ethic, he words gave me the excuse I need to give up and hide behind my own words, "Oh no, I can't draw."

But I was drawn to ceramics my senior year in high school and felt slightly successful and then start working at the local bead store a couple of years later. There I discovered color and had the time and resources to experiment with it. I read some books and magazines about the theory and process of designing jewelry. People loved what I created and I found that working with pliers and string was a totally different experience than trying to draw.

These lessons learned over several years making jewelry transferred easily to small, brightly-colored pieces of cloth. I went on tour and took them with me to keep my hands busy on the bus. Over those 5 months, I made a baby quilt and hand-quilted it. I can't remember how I bound the edges. I do know that my closest friend on that trip was the Costume Head and let me use the company's sewing machine for that part.

Now that I tell that story, I remember that I also made a baby quilt for my favorite teacher in high school my senior year when she had a baby. It was a log cabin style and I have no idea why I thought it was something I could do. Although, again, log cabins don't require exact patterns. Plus, at that point, I was making a lot of jumpers for myself and my first RenFaire costume. Actually, our high school theater director empowered a group of us to feel like successful seamstresses by letting us sew period costumes for our production of The Heiress. I didn't actually participate in that but all my friends did and then they showed me how to follow a pattern and use my machine. Thanks Tricia, Elena and Janstee! For the quilt, I remember sitting in the basement with my machine set up at the ping-pong table, having learned the phrase "stitch in the ditch" and doing my best to execute it correctly. I used soft baby flannel that had the alphabet since she was my English teacher.

So, after the baby quilts, I was ready for big ones and I started my first in 2002 but since I was still hand-piecing, I didn't actually finish it until 2008. I remember trying to impress Jeffrey with my hippie street cred by talking about it in the back seat of a Jeep after white-water rafting the Ocoee River with his sister and her new husband. While on the island, I borrowed one of Jefferey's many machine and worked on a quilt made out of my ex-husband's boxer shorts. I knew that I had to make art out of my grief or it would fester. It is 97% done and I've just started wondering if I should finish it before my wedding to Jacob.

I've only really picked up heavy-duty quilting since I finished the big charm quilt a year ago. I suppose some of the inspiration is the craft blogs that I have begun following. Again, the colors of the fabric appeal to me, as well as the joy of seeing it transformed from a project into a wrinkly, cuddly blanket when I take it out of the dryer for the first time after it is finished. The hand-work is soothing while I watch TV after a long day. And people love them. This is a satisfying life.

Diet for a Small Planet

In this week's New York Magazine, Anthony Lappe, interviews his mother, Frances Moore Lappe. She wrote the book, Diet for A Small Planet, a book about how our eating habits affect both our own health and the world. She wrote it in 1971 and it is credited with being the first large-scale attnetion that Americans paid to the subject. I haven't read it but a fair number of first edition paperbacks used to float through the re-use center I worked at on the island.

It's a short little interview and sweet. What drew me to notice it out of my other breakfast reading was that Ms. Moore completely embodies my parents' parenting philosophy. Her son pokes at her a little bit, trying to get a rise out of her because he became a carnivore later in life. He implies that she loves her other child more because she is still vegetarian. (That favoritism thing is an awesome trick, by the way, guaranteed to make my mom go nutso.) But his mom replies, "Well, I’d love you if you ate Big Macs, honey. That’s the definition of unconditional love."

Until I started quoting her, my mom said more than once in kind-of mock frustration, "We taught you kids to think for yourselves and now we don't like what you think!"

I know that there are people who firmly believe in authoritarian parenting where the parents make the rules and the children obey them. For many of them, that works. But I am so grateful that my parents chose the authoritative route, trying to work with us as partners with wisdom in our upbringing. They didn't always succeed but for the most part, we have been able to skip that stage of rebellion where I discard everything they've ever taught because of my inevitable disillusionment when I discovered that they were human because obeying their rules actually screwed me up since they are human and imperfect when making the rules in the first place. Or, at least, that's the pattern that I see a lot between authoritarian parents and their kids. After that estrangement (which varies in degree from kid to kid), these families have to live the rest of their lives being constantly disappointed in each other. The parents are always taken by surprise and upset when the kid has a new idea and the kids always feel like their parents don't approve of them.

It wastes a lot of time that they could be enjoying each other.

Let's me be clear: I don't think my family is better than those families. I think I'm lucky to have ended up in one that complemented my inborn personality so well. A million little things could have changed the circumstances I was born into dramatically. I'm just lucky.

But this feels especially like grace when I talk to people about their wedding experiences. So many parents make so many demands and, in the process, push their children away. Because who wants to feel bad? And if your parents are making you feel bad, you're going to limit the time you spend with them. Duty and guilt have to be really powerful to overcome this basic human desire for comfort and well-being.

I have heard and read some really sad stories about this lately so I wanted to take a moment and just thank my parents for loving me regardless of the choices I make. I want to take a moment to thank them for having no expectations for me except that I should be content and happy. I believe this rises out of a security in their own identity so that they don't need me to be a certain way in order to make them look good.

Thank you for that. Because of your parenting choices, I do not have the emotional turmoil that so many brides and grooms have, trying to please their parents while still being true to themselves. I will love you whether or not you eat Big Macs, too. But we can be friends because of your parenting choices and that makes me content and happy.

Not So Frequently Asked Questions, Part 1

So, my favorite wedding blogger is A., who writes at Accordions and Lace. I love her blog because she is not trying to sell anything but is instead trying to process her own experience through storytelling. She is honest enough to be both excited and frustrated by the process and displays a true understanding that most opposing forces in this world need to be held in tension rather than allowing one to overcome the other.

So, she participated in a sort-of chain mail wedding interview. I stuck my hand so high in the air that my shoulders were actually perpendicular to my desk and I sort of hopped around a little without actually leaving the seated position so that she would call on me next.
In gratitude, I will happily return the favor to other brides and grooms who want to be interviewed. Just leave a reply and I'll get to work on it. Here are the rules:

* leave me a comment with your email address saying: “interview me”* I will e-mail you five questions of my choice
* you can then answer the questions on your blog {with a link back to my blog}
* you should also post these rules, along with an offer to interview anyone else who emails you, wanting to be interviewed
* anyone who asks to be interviewed should be sent 5 questions to answer on their blog
* it would be nice if the questions were individualized for each blogger

So, A.'s first question is, "You seem to have gone in a lot of different directions and gone through many transitions in your (young!) life. How did you get here?"

One of my favorite singers is Barbara Cook, who quoted Stephen Sondheim on the tribute album that she recorded when he said that he never felt like anything that he wrote was particularly revolutionary. He just did the next thing in front of him. Of course Sondheim had certain things that guaranteed that the next opportunity in front of him had the chance to be revolutionary: talent and a supportive social and professional network being at the top of the list.

I feel a little like Sondheim. A solid family that gave me the ability to adventure outside my comfort zone and a probably inherent sense that I should live a life as interesting as the heroines' in the novels I read were the reasons why the next thing in front of me on my path was different from the last thing. So, although I started a little boring as a teacher, I married a poet who was also an actor, which made my life interesting in my early 20s. Interesting does not always equate to happy, remember. When telling the story that way, I don't think anyone would be surprised to learn that my ex-husband told me lies about himself on our first date in order to impress me, then had to build on those lies by building a fictional life that he lived when he wasn't with me in order to support those original lies. At some point the lying became a habit and when he left it was a complete surprise to me that the relationship was even in jeopardy because he always told me what he thought I wanted to hear. By that point, unbeknownst to me, he was doing drugs regularly and had a mistress that he quickly married after the divorce. It turns out that he had never gotten the Bachelors degree, Masters degree or coursework toward a teaching certificate that he told me he was getting when he was gone at nights, even though he gave me tours of the campus and told me stories about being a TA.

But the women in the novels pick themselves up from being knocked down by dramatic adversity and find interesting tasks to occupy them until they heal. I had already done this once before when I left my first teaching job completely burned out and responded a few months later to an ad in The Reader looking for teachers of child actors in plays. That adventure took me on tour with a great group of roadies and actors and renewed my vigor for teaching. However, when the next teaching job also turned sour after two years and within a year of my husband leaving, I accepted an invitation from the son of a family friend who I met at a wedding to go visit him on Orcas Island. There I found a community of artists, organic farmers, trustafarians, Microsoft retirees, actual retirees, hippies and any number of solid folk who shared a common desire to live surrounded by the beauty of oceans, mountains and trees and equally surrounded by the beauty of a community forced into closeness by its small size (only one grocery store) and remoteness (1.5 hour ferry ride available only four times a day). I started my blog when I moved there so that I could allow the rhythm of that life to lull me back to a place of equilibrium while still paying attention to the experience. I was writing the story that I hoped my life was interesting enough to sustain. I give my family credit for my sense of self-assurance that anyone would want to read my story because they exposed me to lots of adults who told me I was interesting as a kid and for believing it themselves, even if they expressed it by shaking their heads in bewildered disbelief at the ideas I would come up with.

The decision to come live in the city of Chicago came from the fact that I missed being an active part of my family and because after awhile it became clear that I couldn't change them world from a tiny island on the border with Canada. I had regained my vigor again. After a stint in a local non-profit, this naturally led to a Public Policy program at the university of Chicago and to my current status as a job-seeker. While I was doing all of that, more of my adventurous focus was on finding a spiritual home first by trying to push my way into a community that was not right for me and sinking into the comfort of the emerging Christianity movement when I fell backwards from the attempt. This new-found validation of my leanings toward pluralism and universalism made my interfaith relationship with Jacob possible.

Storytelling and family. These are the things that brought me here.

Thanks for asking.

Update

So, my little brother made the 350 pound security man with the very serious face laugh when he said, "Move along, people. No cause for alarm. There are not two large men on the floor at your feet."


Then, Jacob swore that Brent Albright denied the security man's offer of a hand up in preference for his own. I'm sure that Jacob could have pulled all 230 pounds of muscle up to a standing position all by himself but it was nice of the security man to step in. Claudio Castagnoli got up all by himself. Our trio's heartrates did not slow for at least an hour from having to stand up quickly and scurry out of the way from the two gigantic men flying in our general direction.

For any of you new to the blog, I am telling you stories about Ring of Honor, an indie professional wrestling league that comes to the Chicagoland area every two months or so. I go every time.

Just thought you'd like to know how my weekend was.

Also, did you think I was being sarcastic in my last wedding post when I said that I was doing the flowers for my friend's wedding?

Nope. Here they are in the car being transported. It's so neat to know that their wedding pictures from here until forever will have my creations in them. I have some thoughts from the wedding and will share them with you shortly but wanted to give you a quick update in the meantime.

Convocated and hooded

I have graduated before.

I struggled at first with how to dress in such a way that would be complemented by my gown and hat. In high school, I wore a very large ballgown style cotton sundress of my mother's that I loved for it's intricate quilting.

Looking back, I think, "Of course."

I also french braided my hair, which was very elegant and sophisticated in 1995.

But when I got to school and put on the white gown that was effectively transparent and that was shorter and narrower than my dress (which made it poof out the bottom and gave me a silhouette like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer monster) and looked around to see that almost all of the other girls wore small, white dresses, making their gowns lay flat and without other colors showing through, I felt like I was the groomsman at the wedding who wears his Metallica t-shirt under his tux shirt, which is fine until he starts sweating on the dance floor. He is oblivious but everyone else quickly forms an opinion about his character. Also, when I realized that everyone else had their hair loose to form an aurora around their heads under their mortarboards, I felt a little less fancy.
The only explanation I can offer is that I had all of this training in competitive speech (forensics) and choirs that taught me that when I dressed up, I needed to make sure that my hair didn't fall in my face. I didn't dress up much except to perform so the association was strong.
By the time I graduated from college, I'd learned my lesson about the dress and half-way with the hair. I think it helped that I had read Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy Night, which has a positively brilliant section where Harriet Vane carefully chooses her own outfit for her reunion at Oxford to complement the academic gown she would need to don again and then mentally pities the woman who has not had such forethought.
Look at my awesome family! We had picnic breakfast that morning in celebration. It was something we used to do when we visited my grandma, grandpa and great-aunts and uncles in Danville, IL all the time when I was a kid. Looking back, I realize that it was super labor intensive for the women. They would make pancake batter, pack up milk, orange juice, eggs, bacon, butter and jam into coolers and take it all out to the picnic shelter in a public park and use electric skillets to cook it fresh in the outdoors. They even used to bring pretty cloth tablecloths to cover the uggy picnic tables.
I think that I've finally figured out graduation fashion, which is good because I can't see myself going back to school again and it's nice to finally get it right.

Of course, getting my Master's Degree is about a little more than just fashion. It's also about being surrounded by magnificent architecture.
And good friends made during the experience.
And nostalgia for our freshman exuberance.

And good friends who stood in for family when my cousin decided to get married the same weekend. (She waited until Sunday so I could just make it to Florida in time for the ceremony but my immediate family were all taking the cheaper earlier flights.) But just look at that cheering section!

I have to admit that I'm struggling a little bit right now with having spent all of this money to get this degree. I learned during my first year that I absolutely abhor generating quantitative data about social phenomena and so didn't spend more time than the minimum required learning how. I figured that I wouldn't want a job doing that so I should focus on classes that would inform my professional interests. I can't think of another strategy that would have made more sense but now it seems like the only jobs out there are for quantitative data research. All other jobs for people with Master's Degrees in Public Policy require me to have the Catch-22 of management experience. You can't get a job without it but you can't get the experience without someone first hiring you to do it.

Still, its only Day 3 of the job search. I will persevere. Someone out there will think I'm awesome.

I think that my time in grad school was also inherently valuable. I think about the world in a completely different way (rational choice theory, anyone?). Actually, learning the analysis that I've learned simply provided a codified framework for what I've always kind of suspected. I am so much more mentally comfortable now that I have a little support for my thoughts, like finally finding a good bra.

I met good people and learned more about myself through them. I'm a little sheepish to admit that I also found a huband.

Plus, it was just plain fun to spend some time on a student's schedule, excercising my brain. How luxurious! Although it was sometimes frustrating to be spinning my wheels by writing papers about topics that my professors already knew about rather than actually effecting change in the world through my work, I know the practice will benefit my work (when I actually get to do some).

So, overall, the benefits of the effort outweigh the costs. Any policy-maker would evaluate that kind of endeavor as a success.

Budgets

Today I thinking about budgets. The background is a general discomfort with a sense I have of the overriding wedding culture that has developed as a response to the Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC) which is represented by bridal magazines and bridal conventions that say that your wedding must be a spend-fest of strapless poufy white dresses and matching polyester bridesmaid and table number cards at a sit-down dinner in a dedicated event hall with flocked wallpaper and gold-veined mirrors. You know, prom grown-up style. You might be able to tell that I dislike the WIC as much as the next hipster. (However, my brother's wedding that completely matched this model has softened up my disdain quite a bit since it turned out to be just as full of love and personality and good tears as any indie wedding I've ever been to.)

But my discomfort with the WIC has been established since my first wedding 10 years ago when I read Bridal Bargains and it changed my world. My new discomfort is the movement that has grown up out of a community of brides like me that must, understandable, tear down the old model in order to be emotionally ready to design a new one. It is a necessary dynamic but both extremes need to be held in tension or the final cultural outcome is not greater freedom for all couples to do what is most meaningful for them but instead a polarization of only two options for them to choose from: traditional and alternative. I am a huge fan of Ariel and the Offbeat Bride community. Huge fan. I was surfing around and found her Halloween costume where she pulls together indie bride trends into one costume and it illustrates the less familiar extreme perfectly. Ariel is so impressive because she manages to celebrate individual couples' choices while also noting that trends emerge. And I agree: trends are totally fine. That is, as long as they stay trends and do not become new norms that must be followed if the wedding is to be considered "genuine" and "a perfect reflection of our personality."

One of these trends to choose a wedding style that involves rounding up all of your fabulously crafty and artistic friends and having everyone pitch in to pull this thing together for less than $2,000 or $5,000 or $10,000. And today that has me thinking about budgets.

I'm going to trace out the internet map of my reading this morning and then I'm going to discuss it a little. First, I read about this wedding in which a couple got married in the barn at Praire Crossings, where their Community Supported Agriculture farm is located. Awesome. I love shit like this. Especially the board games for folks that wanted to stick around but didn't want to dance. Like all of the weddings featured on this website, it follows a template of simple questions to tell the details of the wedding story. I've been reading for months but didn't notice that one of the questions was "What makes this wedding thrifty?" Like I said in the comments, this made me deflate a little since we're spending a fair amount of money on our wedding for a variety of reasons. I think everyone on these blogs has little dreams of having their own wedding featured someday and I was a little disappointed to realize that I probably shouldn't even ask since we're not really thrifty. (Which may not be true, as I think about it more.) Still, those were my feelings at the time. Magically, though, the next post I read was this one that railed against the very same low-budget-centric vibes that have been getting me down and was I felt flated again. Then, I left a comment on the first post and got a nice reply from the author affirming what I said and pointing out that the question in its complete form is "What makes this wedding thrifty, whatever that means to you?" and welcoming me to the community. Then, in my normal blog-reading routine, I found this post that perfectly illustrated the culture that I'm frustrated with. Don't get me wrong, this is a lovely couple and I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with their relationship or their wedding. I especially like her simple dress embroidered with the story of their relationship in pictures. But when they say:

"We started the wedding planning process by declaring a strict and modest budget: $2,000 to be exact. We wanted our wedding to be about sincerity, authenticity, connection, and a celebration and proclamation of love and commitment. We didn’t want it to be about monogrammed napkins and excessive amounts of fondant,"

with all the idealistic zeal of evangelists, it's easy to hear that a wedding that cost more than that would not be about sincerity, authenticity, or connection and that the monogrammed napkins and fondant would be more important than the celebration and proclamation of their love.

Now, I am positive that these are good people and they would not ever want to make someone feel bad for having a different kind of wedding than they have. But, as any good psychoanalyst will tell you, it's not always important what was said: let's focus on what you heard. There's a good chance this says more about my own insecurities than anything else.

But the thing is, we're spending $15,000 on our wedding and there will not be a monogrammed napkin in sight. In fact, we have about 7 line items in our budget: location, band, officiants, outfits, flowers for a bouquet and some boutonnieres, some judaica for the ceremony and food that can be provided without servers: cheese trays, cupcakes and champagne. We're simply doing without everything else. Chicago is expensive, yo. And we are the type of people who develop large, deep friend networks and value our extended familes. A wedding with only 80 guests would leave out some very important people and would not "reflect who we really are." We've set our priorities and are spending our money on those things. Have we planned them as cheaply as possible?

No.

But I'd rather spend the money on vendors than be a project manager for this event. Because, in the end, it's just one day. A very special day. But one day and one party. Again, this decision reflects who we are as a couple. Our relationship would be in tatters by the time we got to that day if I had to be a project manager, herding our friends into doing jobs to save us money.

My cousin had a wedding in this style that was amazingly lovely two weeks ago. But when her mom fell in the middle of the night 12 hours before the wedding, cracked three ribs and punctured her lung and none of us knew if they would release her for the hospital in time, the conversation revolved around whether or not the wedding would go ahead without her. The bride's mother! And I agreed with both sides. One said that none of the plans, none of the white christmas lights the homemade centerpieces or the song the couple sang to the crowd instead of a first dance would be worth it if her mother wasn't there. The other side said that marriages have to overcome a lot of disappointments and can only do so if they are actually a marriage. In fact, Jewish law holds that once a date has been set, nothing can postpone a wedding, even a death in the immediate family. What God is bringing together, let no one get in the way, indeed.

So, I am resolute that I will not sacrifice our relationship for a few thousand dollars. It will not reflect badly upon us and our relationship if strangers prepare the food and no one will believe it is inauthentic if there are not cute, hand-lettered signs all over the place. I DIYed the hell out of my first wedding to the delight of my guests who still tell me that it was the best wedding they have ever attended: bingo, homemade flowers, self-chosen bridesmaids' dresses, invitations created on our home printer, several small cakes, Halloween candy, no veil, costume rehearsal dinner, cartoon logo, Walt Whitman readings and CDs instead of a DJ long before iPods were even a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye. A great performance does not guarantee a good marriage. And when it comes down to it, I would marry Jacob at the courthouse tomorrow. But this wedding isn't about me.

It is about us. More importantly - and I really do mean more importantly - it is about validating the community that produced and shaped us. Why invite anyone or spend any money on a celebration if it is not about telling those people that their effort has been worthwhile? That their own marriages contributed in some way to this happiness? That their loneliness which gave them wisdom to share had purpose? That the lessons based on their own experience - taught through example, conversations and arguments - have produced fruit?

Their presence helps Jacob and I to understand on a deep soul level that despite disagreements and because of the moments where we share hearts and minds, they will continue being our community. They are committing to shape us and be shaped by us just like Jacob and I are committing to shape each other and to allow ourselves to be shaped in order to accomplish our common goal of mending the world: tikkun olam.

This is worth $15,000.

Besides, I can't marry Jacob at the courthouse tomorrow anyway. I will be doing the flowers for my friend's DIY wedding with a $4,000 budget. ---grin---

Shiny teeth and shiny soul

Yesterday, I went out to the suburbs to get my hair cut and to my teeth cleaned. I have had the same dentist my entire life and the women there have gotten to know me pretty well. I've had quite a few problems with my mouth, including knocking out my front tooth when I was 10 and riding a skate board. They've watched me grow up. My mom told me that they were very excited to hear about my wedding when she had been in there last.

So, I took a picture of Jacob to show them and the drawings of my wedding dress.

My mom was right. They WERE very excited. As Therese and I were talking, she pointed to me in the photo and said, "It's good to see this Rebecca again." Then, she talked a little bit about how hard it was to watch me after my ex-husband turned out to be "unfortunate." I cried right there in the dentist's office because her concern made me realize that these women love me. The dentist's assistants!

One of the reasons why it is important for societies to have ceremonies and traditions is that it gives people a chance to say things that the normal, everyday interactions of life do not allow for. I am grateful for it.

A little exercise

On Monday, I rode a bike for the first time since I was probably 12 years ago. That's two decades, folks.

I was a little nervous.

I won't say it all came back to me you know, like riding a bicycle. It will be awhile until I feel like I won't fall off at any moment. But it also felt good.

I'm riding a bike because I discovered that the Curves I was going to sign up for as part of my weight-loss regimen is closing at the end of the month. The next closest one is a mile and a half away and I refuse to drive a car such a small distance every day and but it would be really time-consuming to walk.

So, a bike.

On my first ride I was not surprised at all that I got tired very quickly. But I want to dance and dance and dance at my wedding so I forged on along the path the runs along Chicago's lakeshore. Thank you Daniel Burnham for our lakeshore.

I smiled at homeless people and stayed as far right as I possibly could. I looked ridiculous and didn't care. I endured the sewage smell of an unintentional retention pond and moved carefully through sandy patches. I was not encouraged by the tiny woman in spandex who passed me and promptly wiped out. I wore sunblock and took my journal, just in case I needed to rest. And I didn't.

It was good. I can do this every morning. Maybe to the Curves. Maybe all by itself.

A little exercise can be a wondrous thing.

Interfaith

My friend just sent me an email with this description of what he had seen and his appreciation for the experiences that being in Chicago offers.

I couldn't agree more.

"I just walked past a yarmulke wearing, Jewish dwarf sitting and reading about Islam in the library of Loyola University... a Jesuit University."

I also appreciate that I have such good friends who single me out as someone who would appreciate such a story. It's good to be known.